


At The End Of All Things

by It-is-the-Hannah (carry_on_my_wayward_outcasts)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Carol Danvers is a lesbian, Carol Danvers is a mom AND a badass, Eventual Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Peter Parker Lives, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, implied/referenced carol danvers/maria rambeau, implied/referenced steve rogers/bucky barnes, some discussions of canon death in regards to the snap- Avengers Infinity War, tony stark doesn't really know how to be a parent yet but he's working on it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2020-09-07 08:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 32,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20306161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carry_on_my_wayward_outcasts/pseuds/It-is-the-Hannah
Summary: In which Peter survives the snap, and that changes everything.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so listen my friend texted me a depressing headcanon a couple days ago and I was like, okay, I have to write that but FIRST I have to set it up for MAXIMUM DRAMA  
So please join me on this soon-to-be multichapter endgame AU where Tony is a Dad in more ways than one  
Will update frequently!  
Enjoy!

Peter was quiet. That was what worried Tony the most. 

They had been in space long enough for even the worst of the bruises to have faded, for his cuts to have healed, the ash of their allies washed from their skin, but the quiet lingered. After they watched everyone around them turn to dust, Peter had fallen to his knees, and it was probably only because Tony dropped beside him in worry that he even heard the last words the kid said. 

“We lost, didn’t we?” His voice had been so small, so defeated, so painfully  _ young,  _ and Tony had realized that he finally found something he couldn’t fix. All he could do was scoop the kid into a hug and hold him while they both shook off the terror of a battle, and then start figuring out a way to get them both home and find out what happened.

Peter had remained near silent the entire time they had worked on getting a ship into working order, and he hadn’t gotten any better once they got into space. It was such a stark difference from the chatterbox he had been before that Tony was almost afraid something was irreparably broken in the kid.

Fifteen. God, he was so young. Too young for any of this. The guilt was already pressing heavily on Tony’s shoulders, but he had been practicing bearing the weight of his sins since before the kid was even born. Peter, meanwhile, had gone from helping old ladies cross the street to having to help save the universe in less than two years. 

No wonder he was having a hard time. 

Not to mention the whole set adrift in space with no hope of rescue thing. 

Peter sat in the cockpit, staring out at the stars when Tony joined him, with some of their last rations in hand. Peter’s only acknowledgement of his presence was to lean heavily into Tony’s side. 

“It really is beautiful out here, isn’t it?” A shrug. At least Tony knew he was listening. “You know, when I was a kid, I’d sometimes dream about being an astronaut and seeing the stars up close. And then after the portal in New York- I didn’t even like going outside at night for a few years, there. But I missed the stars. And then one night, Pepper and I were on vacation together on this tiny island somewhere, and she dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night because she wanted to watch a meteor shower. And it was just- beautiful. I mean, I was still anxious as hell, and we didn’t manage to stay outside for very long, but.” He sighed. “There’s always some good, in all the bad, I guess is what I’m trying to say. The stars are pretty. We’re both still alive. That’s something, right?” Peter curled tighter into himself. “You know it’s not your fault, kid. Whatever happens, I want you to know that it wasn’t on you. Sometimes, the good guys just lose.” Peter nodded slightly, an acknowledgement more than an agreement, but Tony was so, so tired, and so he would take it. “Okay. Good talk.” 

He clapped the kid on the shoulder, and he meant to get up, but his overworked and underfed body protested the idea. Instead, he remained sitting on the floor with the teen curled into his side until they both drifted off into a fitful sleep. 

What seemed like moments later, but was probably closer to hours, Tony was awoken by a bright light shining in his face. Outside the window of the ship was a glowing humanoid woman, smiling down at them. 

She didn’t look how Tony’s mother had always said angels would, but at this point he was used to his picture of the universe being wrong. He just hoped that she was here for them both, and the kid wouldn’t have to be alone when he finally died as well. 

Tony closed his eyes against the light. He wanted to pretend, just for a while longer, that he would get to go home after all. God had fucked him over enough, he could wait a few minutes to meet him.

Then there was a knock against the window, and his eyes flew open again. The woman was frowning now, not angrily, more-- concerned. It wasn’t a look he was used to getting from anyone other than Pepper, and it shocked him just enough to register that she was now gesturing for him to do- something. She mimed opening a door with her hand, and- oh. The airlock. Tony shifted Peter off his lap, the unconscious teenager making a mild noise of protest but otherwise not reacting, and crawled to the door. There were two buttons, one for the outside door and one for the cabin. He managed to haul himself mostly upright and pressed the first one, watching the woman float through and land on the floor of the ship before closing the outer door and opening the inner. He slumped against the wall while the woman came into the cabin and closed the door behind her, crouching down in front of him. Now that she had stopped glowing, she seemed a lot less heavenly. 

“You must be Tony.” He managed a nod, and she smiled gently down at him. “Pepper was worried about you. She’ll be happy to hear that you’re okay.”

“Pepper?” He croaked out, “is she--”

“She’s okay. A lot of people-- a lot of everything is gone, but she and several of your friends made it.”

“Are you an angel?” She frowned slightly, that same worried look she had given him when she was outside.

“No, I’m a human, mostly. It’s kind of a long story about the glowing and everything, but I was born on Earth. The name’s Carol. Carol Danvers. Why did you think I was an angel?”

“I’m--” he shook his head, “this is a hallucination. I’m dying. You’re-- I don’t know.” He didn’t realize he was hyperventilating until she put her hand on his chest. 

“Breathe, Tony. Here, put one hand on your chest, and the other-” She pressed one of his hands to the pulse point on her neck. It was steady and warm, and the softness of her breath against his face as they sat close together was too gentle for him to have imagined. Slowly, his heart rate evened, and his own breaths got easier. “There you go, Tony. You’re alive. I’m real. I’m here to take you home. Okay?” She flashed that grin at him again, and he felt his own smile carve its way across his face as he nodded. “What happened with you out here? Have you been all alone this whole time?” His face instantly fell.

“No, I- Peter, the kid, he’s with me. He’s not-” His breathing was getting ragged again, and she pressed her hands to his shoulders. 

“Hey, it’s gonna be okay. We’ll take care of him. Where is he?” She helped him up and he led her to where Peter still lay in the cockpit. They both knelt beside the boy, who in his sleep looked impossibly young and frail. She brushed a lock of hair back from his head, felt his pulse, glanced at his wounds. 

“He’ll be alright until we get back to Earth. Just sit with him, we’ll be home before you know it. I’m going to tow your ship. Okay?” He nodded.

“Thank you,” she looked at him oddly, so he continued, “for saving us. We- I couldn’t make it back without help. I tried, but-” She shook her head.

“You did your best. We all did. This is just what comes after.You don’t need to thank me.” Suddenly, she looked as old as he felt, and his heart hurt for her. “I’m just happy that I managed to save anybody.” He didn’t know what to say to that, so he just nodded as she clasped him on the shoulder and left. A few moments later, he felt the ship moving, and watched as the stars outside the window began to rocket past. He sat down heavily and closed his eyes, stroking his hand through the kid’s hair. 

They were going home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow this felt like it took forever to write!  
Here we are, back on Earth.  
Enjoy!

The Earth really was  _ beautiful  _ from space. Seeing it come into view reminded Tony of the end of long car trips as a young child, when their street sign finally came into view and he could relax knowing that in just a few minutes more he would be back in his own bed, safe again for at least a little while. 

Actually touching down on the planet was that feeling, but turned to a million. Stepping out of the hatch with a barely awake Peter in tow, and looking up from the wonder of grass beneath his feet to see Pepper rushing towards them,  _ alive _ \-- that was indescribable. 

She crashed into him so hard he almost fell over with the force of her hug, but she held him up with ease. They pulled back after a few long, blissful moments, Pepper’s hands gripping Tony’s shoulders and Tony’s hands cradling her face, each desperately trying to prove to themselves that this was real, they both survived, they were okay even if the whole world was in ruins. 

“Hey, Pep,” Tony whispered. 

“ _ Tony _ ," she gasped a sob, and pulled him into another hug. When they released each other again, Tony finally noticed the others gathered around. Meanwhile Pepper, still holding onto his hand, swept Peter into a hug that was nearly as intense as the one she gave Tony. She had only met Peter a few times when he had stayed with them at the compound, but Peter was impossible not to love instantly. 

Tony turned away from them to the others. Rhodey pulled him into a quick hug, but it was Rogers that Tony addressed first. He was always the most direct with Tony, only ever once flinching from telling him the hard thing. He figured this was a time Rogers would understand the need for truth.

"Who did we--" the pained look on everyone’s faces was answer enough. 

"More than we can even count yet." Tony closed his eyes, squeezed Pepper's hand, and took a deep breath. 

"Alright," he reopened his eyes and looked around at the remnants of his team, his  _ family,  _ "let's go figure out what the hell happened. And do we still have cheeseburgers? Because I think me and the kid could use some." 

That earned him the faintest of laughs from Pepper, who was still clinging tightly to both him and Peter. Tony couldn’t help but think that the sound of that laugh was worth everything he had gone through to get back to Earth, that even if the whole universe was gone, at least he still had her. 

“We should get the both of you to medical, before we do anything else.” Rhodey’s voice brought him back to reality, where Pepper was currently serving as more of a literal support for him and the kid than she usually did. If it was just him, he might protest, but Peter looked dead on his feet, and Tony wanted to make sure he was okay before moving on. 

“Do we even still have a functioning medical staff?” He wondered aloud. “Because I’m sure we all know at least a little field medicine, but I think we’re going to need a bit more than that right now.”

“We didn’t lose  _ everybody _ , Tony.” Rogers’ tone was light, in a tired, wry sort of way, as they started heading towards the compound. 

“Was that a joke? From the captain himself? Guess it just took the end of the world.”

“Gallows humor was awfully popular in my first war, it just seemed inappropriate in this century until now.” Tony snorted a laugh, which quickly turned into a cackle, until he was laughing so hard they had to stop just inside the door for him to get a chance to breathe. 

“Tony?” Pepper, and everyone else, was looking at him like he had gone off his rocker.

“Sorry, it’s not that funny, it’s just--” He looked around. “Man, even with everything gone to shit, it’s good to be back home.” This earned him a few smiles, though he noticed Peter was still silent and reserved. He hoped that once they had gotten some food and sleep in him that that would change, but Tony was still worried about the kid. 

Well, really, he was worried about all of them, because he could see his own exhaustion and frustration reflected in every face around him, and in the back of his mind he recognized that there was going to be a long fight ahead of them even after they dealt with the immediate issues. The kid’s well-being, though, was one thing that Tony knew he was directly responsible for for the moment, more than whatever was going on with his teammates, and even maybe the rest of the universe. 

The difference with Peter was that Tony had brought him into this. Sure, the kid was already doing the whole vigilante thing before Tony came into the picture, but he had encouraged it, had brought him into the big leagues, had almost watched him die on a planet light-years away from the friendly-neighborhood spiderman days. Tony was the reason Peter was now being helped into a hospital bed next to him, pale and drawn and surrounded by heroes he hardly knew after fighting a battle he had no business being a part of. Christ, out of everything, all the mistakes he’d made, this was really gonna be the thing that clung to him, wasn’t it? Tony resolved to check up on the kid more often than the occasional text or weekend at the compound that they had been doing lately, maybe he’d even try to convince Peter and his aunt to move upstate with them, to make up for it, and-

“Oh, has anyone called the kid’s aunt, yet? She’s a worrier, that one.” Pepper shook her head. 

“We didn’t know whether or not either of you were even alive until Carol found you, and I wasn’t ready to--” She trailed off, but Tony filled in the rest of the sentence mentally while doctors bustled around them. Wasn’t ready to give up, wasn’t ready to accept it, wasn’t ready to talk about the grief of everything they had lost. He might’ve been projecting, but everyone seemed to have the same looks on their faces, lost but not quite ready to admit it yet. 

“Tony-” Rogers glanced over at the adjacent bed, where Carol was chattering to Peter, trying to distract him while doctors inserted an IV, and leaned in closer to Tony so they wouldn’t overhear what he said next. “I don’t know who Peter’s aunt is, but there’s a good chance she’s not even alive. What’s your plan going to be then?” 

Tony didn’t have an answer. Hadn’t let himself think of the possibility that this kid’s life could be fucked up any more than it already was. Pepper gripped his hand tightly, and while she looked to Rogers, it felt like she was speaking to Tony more than anyone else in the room.

“Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter felt kinda ramble-y, but I'm chalking it up to Tony spending a month in space and me starting school again.  
Hope you liked it!  
Please feel free to leave kudos/comments/come say hi on tumblr @it-is-the-hannah  
Have a great week!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol okay so this chapter and the next couple (I've got about half of ch. 4+5 written already) are going to be slightly longer than usual, because yo girl has been on a fucking roll this week  
Also, this and the next couple of chapters are from Peter's POV, because that's just how it worked out.  
Anyway, have some angst, and some arguments, and, my personal favorite, the start of everyone collectively deciding that Peter Parker is their Son.  
Enjoy!

Peter came awake to the distant sounds of people shouting, and opening his eyes to a glaringly white and empty room, it took him a few moments for his over-exhausted brain to catch up and make sense of the situation. 

He was in a hospital room because he followed up the worst fight of his life with three weeks in space, and he guessed he was alone because everyone had left him to sleep once he passed out listening to that nice woman, who he was pretty sure he remembered glowing in space at them- was her name Carol or Karen? - tell him a story. The shouting was a little harder to figure out, but there weren’t any explosions, so he hoped it was just a regular argument between what was left of the Avengers. 

He didn’t want to get involved, either way. He had had enough of fighting. It always ended with pain, and nightmares, and misery, no matter who ‘won’, and he was sick of it. He just wanted to go home. 

His stomach growled, and he amended that slightly. He wanted food, and maybe another nap, and  _ then  _ he wanted to go home. He wanted a hug, but even if there had been plenty of those going around last night, he couldn’t very well go up to any of the freaking  _ Avengers  _ and ask for one, so he really needed to get home to his Aunt. Or Ned, at least, if May was busy at the hospital helping with all the inevitable clean up from the fight. 

He didn’t let himself consider that going home might be impossible. 

When the shouting died down, Peter, spurred on partially by his empty stomach, gathered up the courage to venture out of his hospital room and see what was going on.  He was thankful that he had been able to put on PJs the night before instead of a hospital gown, so he at least had some dignity. The IV and connected pole presented a bit of a problem at first, but he worked out eventually that it was on wheels, so he could just take it with him. It turned out to be a blessing, anyway, because he was still groggy enough that walking was difficult, and having something other than the wall to lean on was a godsend. 

Even with a vague mental map in his head from the handful of times he had spent the weekend at the compound, it took Peter some time before he managed to stumble into the common lounge where all the adults were congregated. No one noticed his entrance for a solid minute or two, and with what looked like preparation for a battle happening, he wasn’t surprised.

Thor was silently strapping armor across his chest in a corner, staring into the middle distance in a way that kind of freaked Peter out. It was somehow obvious that he wasn’t paying attention to what was going on in the middle of the room, which seemed impossible to Peter given the large hologram planet that hovered over the table there. Dr. Banner, who Peter vaguely remembered seeing in New York back when this all started, was standing next to it talking to what looked like a raccoon but what Peter figured was probably an alien, along with Ms. Carol (Kara? Clara?). Now that Peter wasn’t half delirious, he had a faint recollection of her being the one to find him and Mr. Stark, although he couldn’t quite work out if opening his eyes in space to see her literally pulling their ship back to Earth was a weird hallucination or not. He resolved to ask her at some point, but not right now, because Captain America and the Black Widow were also standing beside them, and Peter had to be honest that even if everyone was cool with each other after the whole crazy alien dictator thing, he personally still hadn’t quite gotten over what had happened in Germany. Not to mention whatever went down between them and Mr. Stark afterwards, because Mr. Stark had looked pretty beat up when he came along with Happy to drive Peter home from the airport.

Of course, he hadn’t looked nearly as bad then as he did now, hunched in a wheelchair as Colonel Rhodes, wearing his full War Machine gear, knelt down to talk with him and Ms. Potts, who sat in a chair beside him. She was the first one to notice Peter standing there awkwardly, and her face did an odd, concerned looking thing as she nudged Mr. Stark to call his attention to Peter’s presence. When Mr. Stark glanced up at him, his expression changed from abject misery to a mixture of warmth and concern so quickly that it was almost scary. 

“Kid!” His voice rang out across the room, making everyone, even Thor, suddenly look over to Peter. “What are you doing up? You shouldn’t be walking.” Peter just shrugged, uncomfortable with the sudden attention, and not entirely sure how to put his complicated feelings into words in a way that would explain why he had desperately needed to find company. Mr. Stark frowned slightly at his lack of response, but thankfully didn’t comment on it. 

“Tony’s right, Peter, between your injuries and the malnutrition, you shouldn’t be out of bed.” Cap sounded disapproving, but Peter couldn’t really bring himself to care. The stern voice did almost make him laugh, being so similar to the detention video they always had to watch, but Peter managed to hold in his giggle. Ms. Carol- he kept coming back to the name Carol so he was pretty sure that was the right one, had no such reservations, and she let out a snicker, although it seemed everyone was just as confused as Peter about the reason as she walked over to him.

“Seriously, guys, lecture later, offer the sick kid a chair first.” She pulled out a chair from the dining table and Peter sunk gratefully into it, not really having registered how much the walk took out of him until he was sitting down again. “Who raised all of you?” That made both Ms. Potts and Colonel Rhodes chuckle, and Mr. Stark roll his eyes at the pair of them, but Peter didn’t understand the joke and he wasn’t willing to ask. The moment passed, and everyone was quickly back to staring at Peter.

“Really, though, kid, what’re you doing up? I know you’ve got freaky super-healing or whatever like Cap’s, but we weren’t even expecting you to be awake yet.” Peter shrugged at his mentor’s words, buying himself a little extra time to consider his answer. The gathered adults continued to look at him expectantly.

“I guess I just woke up and I wanted-” he trailed off, unsure how to finish his sentence. He wanted so many things, but there were few he would admit to. “I wanted to see what everyone was doing. I heard voices.” This seemed like the easiest thing to say. It was true, at least, even if it was only a partial truth, and hopefully it would prompt others to talk for a while and relieve him of their concerned stares. He didn’t know exactly why he had been having so much trouble holding a conversation these past weeks, when words used to pour out of him almost constantly, but he had the trouble nonetheless. 

Instead of responding immediately, everyone stopped looking him directly in the eyes, and there were more than a few glances towards where Mr. Stark was sitting. Peter didn’t appreciate this avoidance, but luckily Mr. Stark broke the silence before he had to do it himself.

“There’s a lead on Thanos’ whereabouts. We’re going after him to finish this.” He paused a moment, seemingly pained by something, before continuing. “Well, they’re going,” he gestured towards the others, “you, me, and Pepper aren’t.” 

“I want to help!” The exclamation tore itself from Peter’s mouth before he had fully consciously processed Tony’s words. “I can’t just sit here while everyone else fights him!” Tony sighed deeply.

“Kid-”

“Stop calling me that! I’ve been in just as many battles as the rest of you, I’m not just some kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing! I was there in Germany, and I fought off the Vulture  _ by myself,  _ and when those guys landed in New York I was one of the first ones on the scene! And I know we lost on Titan, and part of that is probably on me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help all of you finish this! It’s my fight too!” Peter had struggled to his feet during this monologue, and was panting heavily from the effort and from the force of his frustration. The adults were all staring at him, still, but now their expressions were less worry and more shock mixed with what looked uncomfortably like pity. Peter was focused on Mr. Stark, though, the one who had brought him into this, mentored him, and was now telling him he couldn’t clean up his mistakes. He looked stricken.

“Peter, no one is saying you’re not capable,” Captain Rogers started to speak, and Peter turned slightly to look at him as well as Mr. Stark, “But just look at yourself. You just spent three weeks in space after a major battle, with some serious injuries, and not nearly enough food or water. You’re not in any shape to fight, and neither is Tony, but we need to find Thanos as soon as possible if we want to try and fix what happened. I wish we could let you rest and heal enough that you could come with us. I’ve seen you fight, and we could use your extra manpower, but we just don’t have that kind of time.” 

Peter felt a little like he was being treated like a child still, placated with empty words, but he could see Captain Rogers’ point. He was in no shape to fight, and it had already been too long since the initial battle. He nodded, and was about to sink back into his chair when Tony spoke.

“K- Peter, it wasn’t your fault.” Peter shook his head.

“It was as much mine as anybody else’s. I was there. I could have stopped it.” Peter didn’t know how, exactly, he could have done this, because he had gave the fight everything that he had, and then some. He just felt, deep in his bones, that there should have been something,  _ anything,  _ more that he could have done.

“You shouldn’t have had to. Y ou’re just- it shouldn’t have been your responsibility.” Peter shook his head at his mentor, suddenly feeling impossibly weary. 

“I saw the ship. I had the power to do something about it. It was my responsibility.” Uncle Ben’s ‘great power, great responsibility’ speech was echoing in his head, and he wanted to scream, or cry, or  _ something,  _ but he just shrugged it off. He couldn’t bear the looks on any of their faces, so he finally slumped back into the chair, and just stared at the floor instead. He jumped a few seconds later when a large hand clasped his shoulder, and he looked up to see Thor staring at him seriously. 

“There is no shame in resting when you have no more left to give, young one. You fought valiantly, and we will finish it for you.” There was something in the way he said it that made it seem like the words were not coming from Thor himself, but were rather something that had been said to him, once, and which he was now passing on, half-remembered but full of feeling, the way Peter used to sing snatches of childhood lullabies to Ned’s younger cousins when he was helping babysit them. It was comforting in a strange sort of way, and Peter found himself nodding. Job done, Thor removed his hand from Peter’s shoulder, but stayed close as the Black Widow spoke.

“We really do have to get moving, people.” The rest of them nodded.

“Alright,” Captain Rogers said, something about him changing to look like the figure Peter remembered from his history textbooks, “let’s go kill that son of a bitch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I hope you liked the chapter!  
Leave some kudos/comments/hit me up on Tumblr @it-is-the-hannah if you feel like it, shout-out to everyone who has done those things, it always makes my heart very happy! Even if you don't say anything, I love you anyway for reading.  
May your week be filled with lovely things, and I'll see you for the next installment of "Hannah impulsively rewrites Endgame!"


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which mom!Pepper becomes a Thing, and she does a lot of Thinking.  
I had a couple hours in between classes today, so y'all get a fun bonus Pepper introspective interlude!

While most of the team went on the hunt for Thanos, Pepper sat Tony and Peter in a couple comfortable chairs at the dining table, asked FRIDAY to let her know if either of them needed to go back to the med wing, and then disappeared into the kitchen to make them breakfast. 

There was a part of her that desperately wished she was in space with the others, taking down the man that had wrecked her home, had devastated billions of communities, had nearly cost her everything, but that part of her was overruled. Partly, it was common sense that kept her on Earth- she hadn’t practiced fighting in years, someone had to stay behind to figure out what to do if the plan went wrong, she was still CEO of Stark Industries, and she had to focus on what they were going to do in the aftermath of the devastation. Partly, she had stayed behind out of habit- looking after Tony had literally been her job for some time, and even once they started dating she had never really stopped keeping an eye on him. It felt natural to have half her brain focused on whatever he was doing at any given moment, and she knew he did the same for her. 

Mostly, though, she was on Earth because she couldn’t bear to be anywhere else. She had really thought Tony was dead this time, and it was a cold, dreadful feeling that she had almost forgotten the weight of since Afghanistan. She hadn’t cried in all the long three weeks, not over anything on the news, not when she read all the long lists of those that had been confirmed missing, dead,  _ snapped. _ There simply hadn’t been any room in her for any feeling other than the fearful numbness, and she felt she had only come back online when she finally got him in her arms again. Even with Tony in just the next room over, she had to resist the urge to go feel his pulse, double check that she wasn’t dreaming, that he really had come back to her.

And Peter,  god _ , Peter.  _ She hadn’t quite  _ known  _ Peter before, but he had been present enough in her life that she had begun to think of him as family in a distant sort of way. Tony had been bringing him up to the compound semi-regularly after the press conference debacle, and Pepper had shared a handful of meals with the teenager, perhaps a couple dozen conversations, and she had listened to Tony and Happy both absentmindedly talk about what he was up to as Spiderman, or at school, or in the lab. Peter was like a younger cousin, or a friend’s sibling, someone she didn’t see often, but who she liked well enough, and maybe sometimes felt a protective instinct for when he turned up with a black eye from some fight or another. 

Last night, something had changed. 

When the ship first touched down, she had only been thinking of Tony,  _ Tony, Tony,  _ until she got him in her arms and felt him breathing against her. Once she confirmed that he was alive, though, she had finally had eyes for Peter, who had just looked so--  _ small.  _ And lost. And Pepper had never been as invested as Tony was in having children, but she had looked at Peter standing there in the dark, impossibly young and fragile, and she had pulled him into a hug nearly as tight as Tony’s. Peter practically melting into her arms had just sealed the deal. The sudden, fierce certainty that she would be there to look after this kid no matter what shocked her a little, but the feeling was there nonetheless, and a single glance at Tony confirmed that he felt the same way. 

So here she was, in the kitchen, making breakfast, taking care of her soon-to-be husband and their-- well, not their son, because he had family of his own (she _hoped _he still had a family left), but something like that. She wasn’t out fighting the good fight, and she had called her assistant and taken the day off from leading the company as soon as Tony had fallen asleep the night before, and she was wearing sweatpants and one of Tony's shirts and was just generally doing everything that her college-aged self had sworn she never would.

She couldn’t bring herself to feel bad about it. 

She did feel a little bad about leaving Tony and Peter alone together after they had fought so recently, but she also felt that it would probably be good for them to get used to being alone somewhere other than the vacuum of space, and that it would be good for them to at least have the opportunity to be mature and talk over their differences on their own. 

Maybe twenty minutes had passed by the time she returned to the main common room, bearing a tray with a massive stack of toast and a couple of the protein shakes the doctors had recommended to get the pair back up to a normal weight. She also had a cup of tea for herself, a calming lavender blend that Bruce had recommended to her the previous week. 

Upon entering the room, it became immediately clear that the effort she had put into making breakfast was in vain. Both Tony and Peter were asleep where they sat, breathing deeply and evenly, Peter curled with his head on the table, and Tony half-slumped next to him with a hand resting on Peter’s back. There was a soft, slow Ella Fitzgerald song playing in the background, and Pepper smiled fondly as she set the tray down lightly on the opposite end of the table so as not to wake them. 

“Did you put that on, FRIDAY, or did they?” Pepper spoke quietly, and FRIDAY responded in kind. 

“Mr. Stark requested that I play music when Mr. Parker expressed distress at the room being ‘too quiet’.” Pepper grimaced. 

“I guess they didn’t talk about their fight, then?”

“Mr. Stark and Mr. Parker both apologized for the things they shouted at each other earlier, if that is what you’re referring to.” Pepper supposed she could count that as a win for now, and ask for the details when one or both of them woke up.

“Will they be alright sleeping like that, or should I wake them up?”

“They will not be in significant physical distress or discomfort unless they stay there for more than two hours.” Pepper nodded.

“Okay, thank you FRIDAY.” The AI didn’t respond, but that was alright. Tony was still working on teaching her all the social pleasantries that JARVIS and VISION had known. 

Pepper sat down at the table next to Tony, holding her mug with one hand and using the other to brush a bit of hair behind his ear. He snorted and sifted slightly, but didn’t wake, and she chuckled to herself at the normalcy of it all as she looked out the window at the garden outside.

For the first time in weeks, she felt almost hopeful.

“Incoming transmission from Colonel Rhodes.” FRIDAY interrupted her peace not even a minute after Pepper finished her tea, and suddenly her heart was racing. 

“Answer it, please?” She spared a glance at the two still sleeping next to her. “Low volume.”

The call popped up on a holographic screen in front of her, and as soon as she saw Rhodey’s face, she knew what he was going to say.

“It’s over. We can’t fix it.” She closed her eyes for a minute, steeled herself against the impossible grief, and then looked back at him.

“Did you kill him?”

“Thor did.” She nodded. This made sense, Thor had felt, almost more than the rest of them, that the snap was his fault.

“Good.” Rhodey looked almost like he wanted to say something else, but paused, and was quiet for a long moment. Tony broke the silence for them, waking up groggily, looking to Pepper almost instinctively.

“Wha’s goin’ on?” Rhodey’s face somehow became even more morose, and Pepper cut him off before he could speak.

“I’ll tell him. You just focus on getting home.” Rhodey nodded, and cut the call. 

“Pepper?” Tony was only half awake, so she just rubbed her hand through his hair the way she always did after nightmares and hummed along to the song that was playing.

“Go back to sleep. We’re okay.”

Tony, trusting her more than he trusted himself sometimes, listened, and was out in moments. Pepper just kept stroking his hair, and as she looked out the window at the half-gone garden, she let herself finally start to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not the chapter I had intended to write today, but the chapter that appeared nonetheless.   
IDK what this timeline is, but we're rolling with it!  
Leave kudos/comments/hit me up on tumblr @it-is-the-hannah if you like  
Hope you enjoyed it! Thank you for reading!  
All the love <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So uh this was real hard to write for reasons I genuinely can't identify but it's twice as long as a usual chapter so!!!  
*Minor Warning For Panic Attack, Some Extremely Mild Disassociation*  
Also there is some crying.   
But also Glee! It's not all doom and gloom!

The compound was eerily silent after the team came back from killing Thanos. Everyone kept to themselves, mostly, Captain Rogers hiding out in the gym and systematically destroying punching bags, the small raccoon-like alien sitting listlessly for hours under one of the few remaining trees in the garden, Ms. Potts throwing herself into her work, and the rest of them drifting silently through the halls, pausing to stare out a window or sit watching the news reports for a while, with little reaction.

Peter was pretty sure the whole lot of them were in shock.

He knew, objectively, that he probably was as well, not having had time to really process what the destroyed infinity stones would mean for the future, and not having yet gathered the courage to find out what exactly it would mean for him, personally.

He still hadn’t found out where Aunt May was. 

He still wasn’t sure if he even wanted to find out.

Maybe denial was a better word for his feelings, instead of shock. He didn’t want to acknowledge that this was real, not just another nightmare that he would safely wake up from back home in Queens.

After Pepper had given them the news over breakfast (and after Peter had gotten over the utter embarrassment of falling asleep at the table following his awkward apologetic conversation with his mentor), Peter had mostly spent the day trying to avoid thinking about anything. He had returned to medical long enough to get the all clear to roam about the compound and have his IV taken out, and then holed himself up in the bedroom he usually stayed in at the compound and marathoned his favorite episodes of Glee and The Office. He ventured out for lunch mostly because FRIDAY told him to, but the depressing sight of all the remaining avengers wallowing in their own grief sent him scurrying back to his room as soon as he had choked down a bland protein shake and some cheerios. 

He didn’t speak to anyone until late in the evening, when suddenly there was a knock on his door. Just the thought of getting up to answer it exhausted him, half-starved and just barely healed as he was, so he merely called out for whoever it was to come in

“What, I bring you dinner and you can’t even be bothered to help me carry it in?” Peter jumped, surprised by the sound of Mr. Stark’s voice. The man was still in his wheelchair from that morning, but other than that he looked healthier than Peter had seen him in weeks, half-smiling and balancing a McDonald’s bag and two drinks on his lap. 

“Sorry, Mr. Stark I- you didn’t have to-” Peter started to get up, but Mr. Stark waved him off and rolled himself into the room.

“Don’t apologize,I was just teasing. And I thought you might need the company. No one’s seen you in hours.” He set the bag down on the edge of the bed, and the drinks on the nightstand, “I mean, you can kick me out if you want. No hard feelings. I just wanted to check on you.” It was kind, kinder than Peter really felt like he deserved at the moment, but he did desperately want not to be alone with his thoughts any longer. 

“No, you can stay. Please.” The please was an afterthought, and it sounded almost childish to his ears, more of an open display of how he wanted to beg for comfort than he really wanted to show, but Mr. Stark just smiled at him. 

“Alright, shove over so I have room.” Peter did, and Mr. Stark hauled himself up on the mattress beside him and started doling out the food, a smorgasbord of burgers and french fries and chicken nuggets. He handed Peter one of the shakes, and Peter internally sighed at the necessity of it. He had never enjoyed protein shakes, but they were often an unfortunate necessity when he didn’t have time to eat enough to keep up with his super-fast metabolism. “You going to drink that, or just have a staring contest with it?” Peter looked over to Mr. Stark, who had one eyebrow arched with a bemused expression on his face. He steeled himself and took a sip of the shake, before spluttering back in shock.

“It’s chocolate!” Mr. Stark laughed at his expression.

“You’ve never had a chocolate protein shake? I used to keep my lab fridge stocked with them when I couldn’t be bothered to take breaks.”

“I could never get them to taste right when I made them so I just stopped trying!” Peter had seen a lot of amazing things in his life, but this really took the cake. Somehow, the simple fact of chocolate shake was enough to make the awful day he was having just a little bit brighter.

Of course, as soon as he had the thought, he remembered why he had been feeling so shitty in the first place, and the brief cheerful mood fled. Mr. Stark must have seen his face fall, because he rapidly shoved a hamburger towards Peter, shaking his head.

“Nope, no, okay, we’re going to have to have a talk eventually, but right now I’m calling pause on today. We’re going to eat dinner, watch whatever the hell you had on before I came in, and pretend that this is just a normal weekend for a little bit, okay? Can we do that, Peter? Because I’ve needed a goddamn break from this shit since about the second day in space, and I’m betting you have too.” Peter nodded. “Okay. Cool. It’s just a normal weekend for the next couple hours.” Peter thought this was definitely easier said than done, but he had to admit that trying to forget everything for a while sounded nice. It was what he had been trying to do all day with no success, but maybe it would be better with company.

They settled back on the bed, leaning up against the pillows with the extra food between them, each resolutely ignoring when the other one winced slightly with particular shifts of movement. 

“So, Underoos, what’re we watching? Gritty crime dramas? Star Wars? Monty Python?” Peter felt a faint blush rise to his cheeks.

“Uh, I was actually watching Glee?” Mr. Stark stared at him as if trying to figure out whether or not he was kidding. It was silent for a long moment, and Peter began to fidget. “We can watch something else if you want, I just-” Mr. Stark held up a hand to stop his ramble before it started.

“No, no. We can watch Glee. That’s the one where they’re all singing highschoolers or something, right?” Peter nodded. “Right. Glee. Why not? You’re never too old to try new things.” Peter watched him to see if he was serious, and then signaled for FRIDAY to start the episode where he left off. The plot wasn’t all that complicated, he figured Mr. Stark could catch up. 

“Wait, wait, wait, oh my god, that substitute looks exactly like Pepper!” Peter was too focused on his fries to really pay attention to what Mr. Stark was talking about, until he felt a light swat on his arm.

“What? Oh- yeah, that’s actually why I started watching the show, I saw a clip on YouTube ages ago and thought the resemblance was really funny.” Mr. Stark shook his head.

“You’re killing me, bud.” He was trying and failing to sound exasperated, a tired grin betraying him. Peter just laughed and focused on his dinner, settling in to watch one of his favorite shows and pretend for a little while that his universe wasn’t going to hell.

* * * * *

A few episodes later, they were both sprawled lazily on the bed, fast food wrappers shoved to the side, laughing at the antics on screen. Peter hadn’t felt this relaxed since this whole thing began, and it seemed like Mr. Stark was enjoying himself just as much, if his dramatic reactions and running commentary were anything to go by. 

All good things have to come to an end, though, as when the ending theme music began to play once more, Mr. Stark paused the episode and turned to look at Peter.

“Peter.” The teenager in question did not want to have any part in whatever conversation was about to happen, so he kept staring at the black screen. “Come on, you know we have to talk.”

“Does it have to be right now, though?” Peter’s voice sounded small and childlike, even to himself, but that was how he felt, anyway. Mr. Stark sighed. 

“I don’t want it to be right now, either, but-- listen. We have to start making arrangements. Sooner rather than later. I know it’s hard, and I wish it didn’t have to happen, but--” Peter turned to look at the man beside him. 

“Arrangements?” 

“Yeah, for where you’re going to stay, and-- well, everything.” Peter felt his blood go cold.

“What do you mean, for where I’m going to stay? What about my aunt?” Mr. Stark looked stricken, but also confused. 

“You don’t-- hasn’t anyone-- Peter, have you looked at the lists of the missing?” Peter shook his head. “Why not?” He went back to not making eye contact, because somehow this was too embarrassing to say to Mr. Stark’s face, especially after complaining about being treated like a little kid that morning.

“Schrodinger's Cat.”

“What?”

“As long as I don’t look, everything is equally fine and not fine, right? Like Schrodinger's Cat. As long as I haven’t seen it-- I can just pretend everything is fine, and the phone lines are just down or something, and I’ll go home as soon as I’m all rested up, and--” He stopped when he felt the hand on his shoulder.

“Peter. Buddy. You need to look at me when I tell you this.” Peter shook his head, not willing to face the truth that he knew in the back of his mind when no one mentioned his aunt at all that day. “ _ Peter. _ ” 

He steeled himself and looked up. 

“Tell me.” Mr. Stark sucked in a deep breath.

“Peter, your aunt May is dead. No one has seen or heard from her since the Snap, and because she works at a hospital, if she was around, she would have been accounted for within the first week. She was put on the official missing list two weeks ago. You were too, actually, because no one knew you had--” The older man kept talking, but Peter tuned him out, the buzzing in his ears too loud. He felt like he should probably be crying. He had cried when Ben died, and when he found out about his parents, and he usually cried at the drop of a hat at sad movies, so why wasn’t he crying now? He felt like he wasn’t processing right, and a part of his brain whispered  _ shock, you’re in shock, you’ve probably been in some stage of it for weeks now _ . He wasn’t breathing right, he realized, not getting enough air, and it was like they were in space again, like he was trapped by the Vulture, like--

Strong arms wrapped around him, one hand pressed to his chest, and he could feel someone’s exaggerated breathing against his back. He slowly drifted back to himself, only to discover to his mortification that he was being hugged from behind by his mentor.

“Shh, Peter, you’re alright, just breathe, in and out, nice and easy. It was just a panic attack, you’re okay. We’re safe.” Oh. A panic attack. Right. 

It wasn’t Peter’s first, given everything that had happened to him, but it had been a couple months since his last one, so this was unexpected.

Or maybe not, given the circumstances. 

“You back with me?” Mr. Stark must have noticed Peter’s change in breathing, as the arms around him loosened. “That was a rough one.” Peter just nodded. “Right, I’m sorry I had to tell you like that, there was probably a better way to do it, but, well. I’m not great at reading cues sometimes.” He put a hand on Peter’s arm as Peter turned around. “Are you gonna be okay? We probably should talk about everything else in the morning, because that was-- a lot. Do you need anything? Or--”

“Is Ned alive?” This was the first question that sprang to Peter’s mind, once he came back to himself. Now that he had started opening the box, he figured he might as well go all in, get all the tragedy over with so he could figure out what to do next.

Oh yeah. That was definitely the shock talking.

“Ned? Oh, your friend from school? Legos Ned?” Peter nodded. “We can check. Are you sure you want to do it tonight?” 

“I have to know, now.” Mr. Stark looked at him appraisingly, before calling up FRIDAY on his watch and typing some things into the virtual screen that was projected there. A few seconds later, there was a ding, and a picture of Peter’s best friend popped up.

“He’s alive.” Peter let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, slumping back against the pillows with his head in his hands. “It looks like his parents didn’t make it, though, he’s listed as staying with relatives in Queens-”

“Probably his dad’s brother’s family.” Tony hit a few keys. 

“Tom and Jessica Leeds?” Peter nodded. “Looks like they’ve got three other kids, and everyone made it. Well, that’s something.” It  _ was _ something. Peter was happy that at least one family had made it through intact, and Ned had always been close with his relatives, so it was good. “So, uh, do you want to call him? Check in? Let everyone know you’re alive?” Peter’s mouth went dry. He didn’t know if he could handle talking to his best friend like everything was normal when everything was so, so awful, but then again, he had never wanted anything more than he wanted to hear Ned’s voice, so he nodded.

“Please.” Tony made a couple complicated gestures and pulled up another window, a call screen projected in front of Peter from somewhere in the ceiling, phone number already plugged into it. 

“Alright, just hit the green button whenever you’re ready. It’s just audio, because this is their home phone, but it should be more reliable than the cell towers right now.” He clapped Peter on the shoulder. “I’ll, uh, leave you by yourself for this, yeah? Give you some privacy, go hang out with Rhodes for a bit or something. Come get me when you’re done. I’ll be there whenever you’re ready to talk. Or watch more Glee. Or anything.” Having spoken, he ruffled Peter’s hair, hoisted himself into his wheelchair, and left the room, closing the door behind him and leaving Peter by himself. 

He stared at the screen for what felt like an eternity before finally working up the courage to press the button to start the call. 

The phone clicked on the fourth ring. 

“Hello?” the voice was hesitant, weary, but so unmistakably that of his best friend that Peter suddenly had to fight back tears. “Who is this?”

“Ned?” He just barely croaked out the word, throat tight with emotion.

“Yeah, who is this?” Ned’s voice had that almost laughing tone to it that meant he was uncomfortable, and Peter realized he needed to actually answer.

“It’s Peter.” There was a silence. “Parker.”

“That’s not funny.” Ned sounded angry, now. “Peter’s dead, no one’s heard from him since the blip, and I don’t know how you got this number but you need to--” Panic immediately seized Peter, afraid that Ned would hang up on him.

“You had to sleep with the lights on until ninth grade because you were scared of the dark!” Peter didn’t know why that was the first thing to pop into his head to make his friend believe him, but once he said it, other things, tiny details that only he would know, kept flooding out of his mouth. “Your mom let us split one of her wine coolers last New Years and we both ended up crying over dog videos on YouTube instead of watching the ball drop. You love mint ice cream, and you hate anchovies on pizza because of that time in fourth grade when you threw up on the tilt-a-whirl. When you had a crush on Lila Jones in middle school I let you try out pick-up lines on me, and I never told a soul when you cried for an hour in the bathroom after school when she rejected you, and you never told a soul that I’m Spider-Man, because you’re my guy in the chair, dude, you’re my best friend, Ned, it’s me--” his breath hitched, and then he was fully sobbing over the phone line. Somehow, his best friend not believing him was the final straw that finally made him give into the tidal wave of grief. 

“Peter?” Ned sounded like he was crying too. “It’s really- you’re alive?”

“Yeah.” He barely managed to croak out the word around the tears. For several minutes, the only sound in the room was their respective sniffles. By the time they managed to calm down, Peter felt almost as dehydrated as he had before going to space.

“I can’t believe you’re actually still alive,”Ned laughed, a little brokenly.

“I know, dude, me too!” Peter couldn’t hold back his own giggle at the impossibility of it all, but quickly sobered. “May’s dead.” 

“I know.” There was a brief silence. “My parents are too.” Peter closed his eyes. The knowing of their guardians being gone and the actually saying it out loud were two very different things, and Peter very nearly started crying again.

“I know. I’m sorry.” 

“Yeah. Me too.” They were quiet again for a moment, both lost in their grief. “What-- I mean, you probably don’t want to talk about what happened yet. But, you’re safe? You have somewhere to stay?” 

It only really occurred to Peter in that moment that this was something he would have to worry about, now. Even though Tony had been trying to bring it up at the start of their conversation. May was- had been- his only living relative. He wasn’t close with any of her friends, or their neighbors, and the only family from school that would have taken him in unquestioningly was Ned’s, which- wasn’t any more possible now than Uncle Ben rising from the dead to look after him.

He couldn’t say any of that to Ned, though, so he just went with the nearest truth and tried to keep the shakiness out of his voice.

“Yeah, I uh, I’m actually staying up at the compound with the Avengers, for now.” 

“Holy shit! I mean, that beats my dad’s sister.” Peter shrugged, even though Ned couldn’t see him.

“I guess so. Everyone’s kind of-- beaten up right now.”

“Yeah,” Ned’s voice was soft, “it’s kind of like that everywhere.” Peter was pretty sure whatever Ned’s version of ‘beaten up’ was couldn’t compare to the lingering and miserable stench of grief-stricken guilt that clung to everyone at the compound, but he got what he was trying to say. The whole world was in tatters right now. 

Peter wasn’t really sure what to say next. He was still having trouble putting his thoughts into words. It seemed like Ned was in a similar boat, because the line was silent for nearly a minute, save for their respective breathing. It didn’t really bother him, the quiet. Somehow, it was enough to know that at least part of Peter’s family was still alive. 

The peace was broken by a muffled voice from Ned’s end of the call. 

“Okay, I’m coming!” The response to someone Peter didn’t know was followed up with words directed towards him, “Sorry, I have to go. My aunt and uncle have kinda been pushing the whole ‘family time’ thing. But dude, I’m uh, I’m really glad you’re okay. You have no idea--” Ned petered off. Okay was maybe not the right word for how Peter felt at the moment, but that was maybe not the best thing to say.

“I know. I’m glad you’re okay too.” 

“Are you going back to Midtown when it opens up again?” Peter hadn’t even begun to think about school.

“I- I’m not sure.”

“Okay, well, then we’ll have to make sure we get together. Soon. I really want to see you in person, hear about all the Avengers gossip, you know?” Peter could feel a faint smile on his face.

“Yeah, Ned. I’ll see you soon, man.” They hung on the line for another few moments, neither really wanting to hang up, until the muffled voice came again, and Ned laughed at whatever they said.

“Alright, Aunt Jess is getting impatient, so I really have to go. Bye, Peter.”

“Bye.” 

The line clicked, and Peter was left alone again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOO WHAT A CHAPTER  
This is where we introduce my handwave-y medical science in regards to how fast the boys are healing. If anyone has actual medical comments on this (or relevant experience/knowledge about anything else that happens in this fic! All my research energy is going towards my midterms rn!) please let me know!  
Fun Writing BTS:  
-The first part of this chapter was written entirely because I was nostalgia watching Glee and remembered that Gwenyth Paltrow guest starred on it and decided I needed to acknowledge this somehow  
-I wrote the phone call with Ned in its entirety like right after I finished writing chapter 2 and then had to figure out how the hell I was going to get from point A to point B  
-There was a deleted draft of this scene where Peter was in a hospital bed and there was the obligatory, rips-the-IV-out-in-frustration moment, before I realized that was gross and also did not flow well
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it! Leave kudos/comments/hit me up on Tumblr @it-is-the-hannah if you like!  
See you next time!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which we take an interlude with Carol and Steve, because I am a simple queer girl and want more Captain Marvel in my life.  
It's been a hot minute since I've updated, but this chapter is hella long so I think it balances out a bit.  
Enjoy!

Carol was tired. 

She hadn’t slept properly since-- well, if she was being honest, since the last time she had made it home to Maria’s, nearly half a year ago, now. There was always too much work to do in the universe for her to rest, and especially once she got wind of Thanos’s plans, she hadn’t stopped for a minute to just process everything that was happening in her life.

She wasn’t very good at slowing down.

Right now, Carol ached to just get up, get moving,  _ do something,  _ but she knew that she wouldn’t be any use to anybody with her brain this chaotic. She knew she needed to take time to grieve, to really accept what had happened to Maria, to Monica, to Nick, and come to terms with the fact that she couldn’t fix this one, but she wanted to do that even less than she wanted to try and actually sleep with the nightmares that were likely to come.

So she did the only thing that she knew of to calm herself down from the wired state she was in-- she went to the gym. Working out never failed to focus her brain in the moment in the way meditation was always supposed to and never did, and she hoped the routine of it now would be enough to override the maelstrom of swirling thoughts that was her mind at the moment. 

The compound they were all staying in had a very helpful AI that directed her where to find spare workout clothes, and then to the gym itself, a massive space in the center of the complex. She was hoping to find it empty, but wasn’t surprised to see the other captain working over a punching bag when she got there, not wearing any gloves. Knowing the man was probably as jumpy as herself, she approached with loud footsteps so as not to startle him, and called to him verbally as soon as she was sure she was within hearing range.

“Captain Rogers.” The man sighed deeply, pausing in his blows to spare her a smile that looked as tired as she felt. 

“It’s just Steve, please, Captain Danvers.” She returned his smile as she sat on a mat to start stretching.

“You can call me Carol, if we’re going by first names.” He nodded at her, paused, for a moment, as if waiting for her to say something else, and then continued rhythmically pounding the bag. The sound of his punches faded into a background white noise, familiar and comforting in an odd, half-remembered way. It had been a long time since she had been to a regular gym, always putting out fires across the universe not leaving room for much else, but she had spent so many hundreds of hours working out with Maria while they were in the air force together that just being in the room had a calming effect on her now. 

Finished with her stretches, she took the time to look around the gym and decide where she wanted to go next. In all honesty, she mostly wanted to punch something, attack a bag with the same relentless determination as Steve was, but she knew enough about herself not to give into that urge. If she didn’t take a break from fighting every once in a while, she would lose herself in it, and she desperately needed to ground herself in something non-violent for a little while. Luckily, this gym was built for the full athletic needs of several superheroes, and along with many of the typical features it boasted a giant climbing wall and jungle gym.

The climbing wall had all the usual safety gear, but when you can fly, falling isn’t really a concern. Carol bypassed all of it and just started climbing, normally at first, and then setting challenges for herself when that was too easy-- rotating through climbing with one hand behind her back, without using her feet, going as silently as possible, with her eyes closed and trusting her instincts. 

It took a while, but eventually she fell into the meditative space she was looking for-- mind blank, muscles aching, nothing to worry about except where she was going to put her hand next--

“FUCK!” The shout tore through the gym along with a loud bang, breaking Carol’s stride and starting her into slipping. She was close enough to the ground that she just hit the mat before her instincts could kick in to get her hovering, and lay there for a minute in annoyance before picking herself up and shaking out the shock. 

“Okay,  _ ow. _ ” She glanced around the gym to figure out why Steve had yelled, but it wasn’t immediately clear. The man was sitting on the edge of a mat, curled around himself and somehow managing to look impossibly small despite his large stature. Carol’s protective instincts warred with her desire not to get any more involved with these people than she had to, but the faint shaking of Steve’s shoulders drew her over even as she silently lamented the end to her brief moment of peace. 

She tried to make her steps loud enough that they wouldn’t startle the man, but he still jumped when she called his name. Catching sight of her, his face immediately schooled itself into a calm, polite expression, but she didn’t miss how raw and open it had been before, nor how his blue eyes seemed more weary than anyone she had ever known. 

It struck her, suddenly, that he didn’t look quite  _ old  _ enough for that kind of expression, even though he was definitely approaching a hundred if he really was  _ the  _ Steve Rogers. 

“I’m sorry, Carol, did I interrupt you? I forgot I wasn’t alone in here and got a little carried away with the bag.” His voice was almost aggressively polite as he gestured over to a spot over on the floor, where a punching bag lay split open and broken off its chain. She wasn’t all that surprised by the bag, having accidentally done similar things once or twice with her own super strength, but the sight of his hand took her aback. 

“You’re bleeding.” He looked down at his knuckles with a detached sort of surprise, as if he hadn’t realized how awful they looked before, and also wasn’t very bothered by it.

“They’ll heal in a couple hours,” he shrugged. “There are some perks to being a superhero.” The smile he shot her looked more like a grimace than anything, and she gave herself a moment to fantasize about just walking away and not getting involved in whatever this poor dude had going on. Unfortunately, she had spent her entire life getting involved in things she probably shouldn’t, and over the years she had absorbed Maria’s habit of looking after lost causes, so in the end she just sighed and extended a hand to help the man up.

“Come on. We’re going to get you cleaned up.” He looked baffled.

“I just told you I heal fast, there’s really no need to--”

“If you don’t at least bandage those things up you’re going to get blood everywhere.” This was the argument that had worked on Carol herself a few times, and she figured it might be effective on Steve as well as she leveled him with the same look she used on enemy combatants that tried to argue with her, and on Monica when she was going through her teenage angst phase. “Come on. If you know where we can track down a first aid kit I’ll do it for you so you don’t have to go to medical.”

Steve looked like he wanted to protest, but relented under her gaze, standing without taking her offered hand. Somehow, even standing at his full height, he still managed to look small, and Carol was having a hard time accepting that  _ this  _ was Captain America, the man whose war strategy she had studied relentlessly as a young adult, who had fought HYDRA and aliens and had led a team against Thanos not even a month before. This man seemed less of a grand war hero and more-- well, more like a lost young man. 

Together they walked through the halls of the compound, somehow avoiding the other residents, and stopped at a large bathroom in the residential area. There were faint voices drifting in through the door as Steve rummaged through the closet to find a kit, but Carol figured the odds of them getting walked in on were low. 

“Found it,” Steve waved the kit at her before handing it over, “I wasn’t sure there would be one in there, I was usually the one to restock the common one in the tower.”

“The tower?” Carol asked absentmindedly, looking for the right supplies.

“Uh, yeah. There were a couple years there where we were based in Stark’s building in New York.” He sat on the closed toilet lid. She gestured for him to give her one of his hands, and he winced when she starts disinfecting it, as if he hadn’t realized it was supposed to hurt until then.

“Do you all live together?” The question was as much an attempt at distraction as it was pure curiosity. 

“No. Not anymore. Never did, really, but we all stayed at the tower a lot before-” he cut himself off abruptly. “Anway. I don’t really know what we’re all going to do now.” A part of her wanted to pry, get the whole story behind whatever messy shape this group took, why supposed teammates had such a hard time looking each other in the eyes, but she knew better than to ask invasive questions like that. Either she would find out the details eventually, or she would move on to other things before it became an issue. 

It did make her wonder, though, why Monica had been so enamoured with these Avengers the last time Carol had been to Earth to visit. Fury and Maria hadn’t given her any details on them other than saying they had stopped a couple disasters, and Carol was content with the idea that her home had at least some sort of emergency protection and didn’t bother looking into them any more than listening to Monica talk at length about which one she thought was hotter. Now, though, she wondered exactly how this dysfunctional group had worked together long enough and become popular enough to make it into teenage gossip magazines. Fighting Thanos had changed everyone, even her, but there were some underlying emotions at play in this compound that she thought they really needed to hash out.

Of course, she couldn’t say any of that to Steve while she set to work bandaging his hands after cleaning the blood off. 

“So, are you really the Steve Rogers from the 40’s, or is this a clone thing happening?” She had wanted to ask this ever since she had met him, but hadn’t had a chance until now. 

“As far as I know, I’m really Steve Rogers.”

“So the plane crash was just a ruse? What’ve you been up to for the last seventy years?” Steve coughed uncomfortably, and Carol realized this might be uncomfortable to talk about in the way her time with the Kree was. “Sorry. You don;t have to answer that.”

“No, it’s fine. I uh, the crash wasn’t a ruse. I got frozen in the ice, the serum kept me alive, they found me and thawed me out in 2012.”

“Jesus, Steve. That must’ve sucked. I’m sorry.” There weren’t really words to capture the misery in his eyes then.

“Yeah. It did.” Carol racked her brain to change the subject into something that was less a reminder of obvious trauma.

“So, I guess you don’t age either?”

“Either?”

“Yeah, I mean, I was born in 1970 but I’ve looked pretty much the same since I turned twenty-five. Is it the same for you or is there some other reason you look like you’re barely thirty?” Steve stared at her, jaw slightly gaping. “What?”

“You’re-- you don’t age?”

“My body doesn’t age, no. I definitely  _ feel  _ old all the time.” He looked down at his hands, still held in hers as she finished up the gauze.

“I never-- I thought the serum just made me stop aging while I was frozen, but I never really considered--” Carol quickly taped the last bandage in place and squeezed his hand to ground him.

“It might be different for you. My powers are completely different from the shit they have you, and I didn’t even notice anything was up until my friend pointed out I was in my thirties and didn’t have any wrinkles. You still might end up aging at some point, especially since you’re only--” She trailed off, not actually knowing his age, but he filled in the blank.

“I’m thirty-one.” It was her turn to gape, now. 

“Fuck, that makes me feel old.” That startled a laugh out of him. “It’s worse than seeing that kid roll up with Stark last night.” Steve shook his head.

“I know. He doesn’t even seem old enough to have his driver’s license, but he fights well enough that he has to at least be in college by now. No one is that good that young, unless they’re Natasha.”

“How’d he end up on the team, anyway? Are you guys doing recruiting or something?”

“No, Stark found him somehow a little while ago. I don’t actually know much--”

“Peter! Wait!” The shout, unmistakably Stark’s voice, cut off the rest of Steve’s thought.

“Speak of the devil.” They barely glance at each other before racing out to the main living room to find Stark sitting at the table, staring into space, a confused look on his face.

“What happened, Tony? Where’s the kid?” Stark shrugged at Steve, seeming just as lost as they were. 

“I don’t know, we were talking about where he was going to stay, since his aunt is officially one of the missing, and I said he should just come live with me and Pepper, and then he just-- bolted.” 

“He just bolted?” Steve was looking much more confused, and Stark just shrugged again. Carol sighed.

“Neither of you have ever had kids, have you?” They both just stared at her. “Right, okay. Where does he usually go when he’s stressed?”

“He likes to get up on high places. Says he enjoys the view.” Carol nodded.

“Alright, he’s probably on the roof. I’ll go find him, make sure he’s okay. You two wait here.”

“But--” Carol left without listening to what Stark wanted to say. She figured his heart was probably in the right place, but emotionally stunted as he and Steve seemed to be, she also didn’t doubt that he had managed to put his foot in his mouth somehow and freaked out the kid. Granted, she also wasn’t great with her feelings, but she at least had experienced enough of Monica’s dramatic breakups and dead goldfish that she was pretty good at talking to emotionally fragile young adults.

As she made her way to the roof and saw the small figure perched near the edge, she thought that she was perhaps getting more involved in this situation than she meant to.

Oh well. As they say, it takes a village, and all that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has read this/left kudos/commented so far. Y'all make my day!  
Hope you enjoyed this chapter!  
Up next: Carol is next in line to adopt Peter Parker, because of course she is.  
See you here soon (hopefully), or in the comments, and as always, feel free to hit me up on tumblr @it-is-the-hannah if you're into that.  
Have a good week!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh I know it's been like a month so I'll just let you get to the Peter&Carol comfort that was promised  
Enjoy!

The wind was shockingly cold, and though the sun beat down overhead, Peter was shivering where he sat, dressed in nothing but a hoodie and an old pair of jeans. He wasn’t wearing shoes. 

He thought he might be crying. 

Peter didn’t really know how he had ended up on the roof. He had been talking to Mr. Stark in the common room, and then Mr. Stark had said something about Peter moving in with him, and Peter had just-- panicked? That seemed like the only word for it, although he didn’t understand the feeling or his own actions. All he knew was that one minute he had been sitting at the long table where they had found out the mission to fix everything had failed, listening to his mentor ramble like it was just another weekend where Peter was staying over to train and work in the labs, and then he was suddenly up and running, something in him screaming that he had to get up, away, _ hide. _

And now he was on the roof. He should probably go apologize to Mr. Stark, finish their conversation, but. 

He had forgotten what happened, this morning. Just for a minute, just when he had woken up, because he had been in _ his bed, _the one he always slept in when visiting Mr. Stark overnight, and the stupid poster of a cat (that he secretly loved, but would never admit) with glasses and a lab coat on was still hanging on his wall, and the sun was shining in through his window, and it had all just been so normal, and so he had forgot.

And then he woke up a little more, and he remembered. 

The fight. The choking dust of that planet as their allies disappeared. The long, painful weeks in space, getting weaker and weaker even as their battle wounds healed. Getting to Earth and finding out that there was no fixing this one, that his Aunt was _ dead _and he really was just an orphan all over again.

The sudden weight of all those memories again was somehow worse after the ever so brief respite of forgetfulness, and he found himself curling up and sobbing for several minutes before actually dragging himself out of bed. He had cried himself to sleep the night before, too, so he had been feeling pretty dehydrated by that point, and as he walked to the kitchen he found himself wishing that he really had forgotten, and could just pretend that everything was actually okay.

And then he immediately felt even more like shit because how could he dare to want to forget Aunt May so soon, and it was as he was mentally beating himself up for this that Mr. Stark had come in and started talking to him, and it was like everything was normal again for a few minutes until Mr. Stark brought up the issue of living situations and--

Well, and now Peter was on the roof, and he was tired, and upset, and confused, but he figured up here at least no one would be able to see him acting like the scared little kid he felt like.

Of course, Captain Danvers (as he had heard a few of the adults calling her), chose this moment to appear from the stairwell in his periphery. She approached him slowly, clearly making an effort not to startle him, which on any other day he probably would have appreciated, but now just sort of offhandedly noticed. He managed a faint smile of acknowledgement when she reached him, but made no move other than that as she sat down on the concrete beside him.

“Hey, Peter.” He didn’t really want to have a conversation, but she had been spectacularly kind to him in the few days he had known her-- rescuing him and Tony, distracting him in the med wing when they got to Earth, talking to him like a person and not just a little kid when the team was getting ready to fight-- so he felt he kind of owed it to her to be polite.

“Hi Captain Danvers.” 

“Peter, I know I introduced myself with my first name. Call me Carol, seriously.” 

Ah, this again. As much as he didn’t like being treated like a kid, he found it hard to actually call adults by their first names. Side effect of being in highschool, he supposed. Still, she was awfully nice, and he hadn’t known her long enough to make it a habit of calling her by her last name, so he just nodded. He would try.

“So,” she said, after a long pause as if she was waiting for him to start the conversation, “Come here often?” This startled a giggle out of him, despite everything. 

“I come up here to think, sometimes.” She nodded.

“There’s an awful lot to think about today, isn’t there.” This could have sounded patronizing, coming from someone else, but somehow Carol made it sound less like a guidance councilor prompt and more of a commiseration from a teammate. 

“Everything is--” he searched for the words to explain what he was feeling, couldn’t produce them, and eventually just settled on the simplest possible phrase, “A lot. Everything’s kind of a lot, today.” 

She smiled at him sadly.

“Yeah. It’s a lot.” There was a pause as they both were lost in their thoughts, and then, “You know, I have-” she paused, closed her eyes, took the kind of deep breath Peter had learned to associate-- years ago, even before all of this-- with that same missed-a-staircase-step feeling of forgetting for a moment about the terrible things that happened, “I _ had _a kid, a few years older than you? She just graduated college, thinking about being a pilot like her mom and I were. We were so proud of her--” Carol cut herself off again. “She wasn’t my biological daughter, though. Her mom and I had been best friends pretty much from the day we met in basic, and so when she had a daughter it just seemed right to raise her together. And I’ve been gone a lot, for the past couple years, looking out for other planets, but whenever I was home I was with them, because sometimes you really do get to choose family, you know?” Peter wasn’t quite sure where she was going with this, but he nodded along anyway. He thought maybe she just needed someone to talk to. “Peter, what I’m trying to say is, your family doesn’t have to be blood. You can make a home with other people. It’s okay.”

Oh. So that’s what this was.

“Did Mr. Stark ask you to come talk to me?” She actually laughed out loud at that, shaking her head in a way that tousled her blonde hair, and Peter was confused all over again.

“I don’t answer to _ Stark, _Peter.” She sobered a little then, and placed a gentle hand on his arm. “For the record, you don’t have to either. If you wanted, any one of us would help you find somewhere to stay, it doesn’t have to be with Tony and Pepper. I just noticed you were having a hard time, and I know that if the situation were reversed and it was Monica here- I’d want someone to come and talk to her.” 

It sounded so much like something his aunt would say in her place that Peter couldn’t quite keep in the sob that came bubbling up from his throat, and Carol pulled him into a tight hug as he started to cry. The hug was as warm and safe as May holding him after a nightmare or a bad patrol or any of the million other times that she wrapped her arms around him and _ squeezed, _but it was so different at the same time, and Peter cried harder with the grief of it all. 

There was a part of him that almost wanted to laugh at how he had now officially cried more in the past two days than he usually did in two _ months, _but it really wasn’t that funny at all, given the circumstances, so he just let himself ride it out. Eventually, the sniffles slowed, and he manged to sit back and wipe his face with the back of his sleeve. It was a childish gesture, and he knew it, but Carol was kind enough to pretend she didn’t notice. Instead, she gave him a couple moments to collect himself before asking,

“So, do you know what you want to do? Because I can fly us off the roof right now and take you anywhere you want to go if you really don’t want to stay with Stark.” She said it with a smile, somehow both deadly serious and almost teasing. It made Peter giggle off the last of his tears, before taking a minute to really consider.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to stay with Mr. Stark and Ms. Potts. He used to love coming up to the compound for the occasional weekend, hanging out with Mr. Stark in the lab, chattering to the other Avengers, and there had been times when he seriously considered taking up Mr. Stark’s offer to spend the summer with them instead of in the city. The thing was, it just felt-- _ wrong, _ to really _ want _to be in a place that had no connection to his aunt, his old life. Like he was betraying her somehow. Forgetting.

“Your aunt would want you to be happy, Peter.” He looked up sharply at her. It was like she had read his thoughts. “I could tell from the look on your face. Listen, I know what it feels like to lose people. Not just now, but in the past. It feels like it’s never going to stop hurting, and don’t get me wrong, it’s always gonna hurt some, but you have to keep living your life. You survived. Don’t throw that away. I wouldn’t want my family to suffer because of me, and I don’t think your aunt would, either, okay? If you think living with Stark will make you happy, then that’s okay, Peter. Really.” He thought about it for a moment. 

“It just- I miss her.” It wasn’t really what he had meant to say, but it was the truest thing in the moment. Carol enfolded him up in another hug.

“I know.” They sat like that for a couple minutes while Peter considered the situation. He wasn’t sure that Eventually, he pulled back. 

“Okay. I- I guess I should go talk to Mr. Stark, huh?” Carol cocked her head at him. 

“Is that really what you want?” Peter shrugged. 

“I think I want to at least talk about it. 

Carol beamed and helped him up off the ground. 

“Alright, let’s go, kiddo.” 

Together, they walked back down the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo!! Long time no see!  
I hope you enjoyed this chapter, I loved writing it even if it took me a whole month (college midterms, y'all, they take all your energy away!)  
This chapter also makes this fic officially my longest ever published, and we're not even halfway through yet!! Look forward to some wonderful future nonsense.  
Anyway, this is the point in the fic where we start getting to the aggressive comfort part of hurt/comfort-- I'm making these characters experience some good old fashioned emotional growth and healing and you all are coming with me (if you want. Obviously.)
> 
> Please leave kudos/comments if you liked it (seriously, to everyone who has already done this, thank you so much!! Your comments are all so lovely and getting the little kudos notification makes my heart light up every time, and I love hearing that you're enjoying this!)  
You can also hit me up @it-is-the-hannah on Tumblr if you're into that  
Otherwise, I'll see you all in the next chapter! (hopefully sooner than this one came out)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof it's been a hot minute again but honestly I think that's just how it's gonna go while I'm in school  
Enjoy The Chapter!!

After Carol ran off to look for Peter, it only took a single look at Tony’s face for Steve to realize he was out of his depth and needed to call Pepper. The older man seemed confused, more than a little panicked, and honestly it looked a little like he might start crying at any second.

Steve had made an effort to make amends for the Accords incident a long time ago, once he had accepted-- after a thorough lecture from Sam about emotional maturity and how  _ trust is important in relationships, Steve _ \-- that he was just as much at fault as Tony had been for the whole affair. He had sent a handful of letters in the intervening months- apologizing, checking in, congratulating him and Pepper on the engagement. He had received a handful of texts in return, as well-- pretty much the same content of his letters, just shorter. Making sure the rogue Avengers were alive after their missions made the news, letting Steve know the crashed Stark Industries plane was nothing to worry about, and once, late at night, a single sentence apology--  _ I’m sorry we couldn’t just talk to each other.  _ Steve had accepted this as an acknowledgement that everything was really water under the bridge, months and months before Thanos reared his ugly head. 

Still, they hadn’t seen each other for two years, and weren’t exactly magically friends again. Even before the Accords, Steve would have hesitated to comfort Tony like this-- he wasn’t exactly the poster child for healthily confronting your feelings. 

“FRIDAY? Can you call Pepper for me, please?”

“Miss Potts is currently unavailable, Captain. She is in a teleconference meeting with the Board of Stark Industries.” Steve glanced at Tony, who was staring off into space.

“Can call her anyway?”

“No, FRIDAY, cancel that,” Tony spoke up before meeting Steve’s eyes, “She’s been putting that meeting off for three days because of me, and I specifically told her this morning that I would be fine talking to Peter by myself so that she could actually get some work done. You don’t need to interrupt her just because I managed to fuck it up.”

“Tony--” The man cut him off with a shake of his head, which was good, because Steve didn’t actually know where he was going with that. 

“Don’t bother trying to tell me I didn’t fuck up, Cap. I was trying to do the right thing, but I managed to screw up like I always do. And anyway, we both know I shouldn’t have even brought him into this in the first place. Everything now is just-- damage control,” he sighed a breathless little laugh, running a hand through his hair. “Christ, he’s just a  _ kid _ . I used to forget sometimes, because he’s smarter than most of the guys with PhD's that I know, and he fights with the best of them, but he’s fifteen. He shouldn’t be dealing with this, and I can’t-- I don’t know how to fix it. I’ve never not been-- I don’t know what to do, here.” Their gazes met. “What do I do, Steve?”

Tony was looking at him with raw emotion in his eyes, and Steve was viscerally reminded how this man had been his friend, once, had trusted him, once, and Steve had trusted enough to watch his back and be his second in command, and now he was scared, and in pain, and Steve was feeling just as much at a loss for how to help anything, but he wanted to try. 

“Tony, the kid just went through hell.” He paused, amended the statement. “We’ve all just been through  _ hell.  _ There’s not exactly a handbook to dealing with these kinds of things, and even if there was, you and I wouldn’t exactly be the poster children for following the rules of emotional competence, would we?” Tony smiled in a strained sort of way, twisting his hands together. 

“Yeah, you’ve got that one right.”

“Sometimes-- sometimes all you can do for a person in this kind of situation is remind them that they have someone in their corner. Someone watching their back. Give them a soft place to land, you know? That’s what you’ve been doing for him, as far as I can tell, and maybe you just need to give him a little time to process everything before he’s ready to accept help.” That’s what Bucky had done for him, after his mom died. Steve hadn’t had quite as an extreme reaction back then as Peter did now, but he had still _ wanted _ to run for the hills after being offered a shoulder to lean on, and he hadn’t been through even half of what Peter had at his age. “Just be there for him. I know you’re doing your best here, Tony, and that’s all you can do. That’s all you’ve ever tried to do.” The other man’s gaze sharpened at this, but Steve didn’t back down. For all their disagreements, he knew that Tony was only ever trying to do what he thought was right, just the same as Steve. Eventually Tony’s eyes softened faintly. 

“I know that’s all you’ve ever tried to do, too.” Steve nodded. It wasn’t an apology from either of them, but they were on firmer ground than they had been in years. “Thank you, Steve.” 

Steve smiled, and put a gentle hand on Tony’s shoulder. “For what it’s worth, you’re not going to have to do this alone.” Tony smiled back, and it looked for a moment as though he was going to say something else, but the moment was interrupted by the appearance of Carol in the doorway. 

“Hey, Stark, I’ve got someone here who wants to talk to you.” Peter stepped out into view from behind her back, and Stark’s faint smile immediately brightened. 

“Hey ki-uh, Peter.”

Peter was fidgeting with the cuff of his sweatshirt, not quite making eye contact, but not looking entirely away, either. “You can still call me kid. I don’t actually mind it, I was just, uh. You know. Yesterday. I didn’t mean to freak out on you like that. Or this morning, either.” He finally managed to meet Tony’s eyes. “I’m really sorry.”

“Oh, Pete--”

“And I wanted to say thank you, for offering to let me stay. I-- it’s just hard, you know?” Steve found himself nodding along with Tony. It had been a few years, for him, and nearly a century for the rest of the world, since his mother died, but he still remembered the feeling afterwards. And he hadn’t been dealing with half the crap that Peter was, now. A part of him registered that he should probably give Tony and Peter some privacy, but his nosier instincts, and the part of him that had instantly felt protective of the kid when he saw him come off the spaceship won out, and he merely melted into the corner slightly to be less conspicuous. Neither brunet seemed to remember that he was there, anyway, and the same appeared to be true for Carol, who was leaning in the doorway slightly behind where Peter was now standing.

“Kid, you don’t have to apologize, or say thank you. You’re-- I care about you Peter, and so does Pepper, and so do a lot of people. I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do, or make you uncomfortable, but I need you to know that I’m here for you, okay? Whatever you decide, I’ll be there to help you figure it out.” Peter nodded once, paused for a beat, apparently thinking, and then rushed forward to wrap his arms around Tony, who appeared shocked. Carol was clearly hiding a laugh behind her hand at the sight. “O-kay, we’re doing the hugging thing. We can do that, too.” He wrapped his arms around Peter’s back and held him there, and Steve now definitely felt uncomfortable witnessing a clearly emotional moment, but couldn’t really sneak out inconspicuously at this point.

“Thank you.” Peter’s voice was muffled against Tony’s shirt, but was still unmistakable.

“Didn’t I  _ just  _ say you don’t have to thank me for this?”

“I know. I still want to. You’ve done a lot for me, even when I don’t deserve it.” Tony carded a hand through the boy’s curls in a gesture that Steve could only describe as  _ fatherly,  _ and wow, that was not something he ever thought he was going to say about his former teammate.

“Someone’s got to look out for the little guy, yeah?” This was clearly an inside joke, because Peter laughed as they finally broke the hug. “And don’t say you don’t deserve it. You’ve done the best you could, and you’re a better man than I ever was at your age. You deserve to be happy, Peter. Whatever that looks like.”

“I don’t want to forget Aunt May.” Suddenly, several things made sense to Steve.

“I don’t want you to forget her, either. I’m not trying to replace your aunt, or your uncle, or anyone. I just want to be there for you, because you’re a good kid. And I think your aunt would want you to be happy, too.”

“Okay.” Peter rubbed his eyes, clearly trying not to cry. “You really want me to stay with you?”

“I really do.” 

“Okay. I-- yeah. Okay. Then I think that’s what I want.” Tony positively beamed, and pulled the kid into another hug. 

“This isn’t going to become a thing. There’s just a lot of hugging emotions happening right now, so I think we’re going to make an exception today.” Peter laughed wetly, clearly properly tearing up, now, and all Steve could think was,

_ They’re going to be okay.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are like three different versions of this chapter sitting in my drafts folder-- it took me so long to get everyone doing and saying what they needed to, but we finally made it!!  
Also don't worry you haven't been Mandela Effected I really did change the title from "the end of all things" to "AT the end of all things", it just felt like it worked better  
I hope you enjoyed this emotions-fest, I am 100% on the "Tony and Steve were actually good friends they just both had really strong personalities and differing opinions" train so their relationship is going to continue to be repaired as this moves forward.  
Based on the current track record (and the fact that I am currently in the middle of finals season), the next chapter will be up sometime in the next month, but in the meantime, please leave kudos/comments/hit me up on tumblr @it-is-the-hannah if you're enjoying the fic! Hearing from you guys really makes me so happy.  
May your winter holidays be merry and your New Year spectacular, and I'll see you in the next installment!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New year, new chapter!!!  
This one is hella long compared to the others (over 2500 words!!) so settle in for some more fluff!

The hugging was becoming a thing.

As the first fractured days after Thanos gently resolved themselves into weeks, and then a whole month, Peter started to notice a pattern among the older residents of the compound. It wasn't like they babied him entirely-- he wouldn't have put up with that for long-- but they did all have a tendency to--  _ look after _ him more than they did each other, in a lot of ways. 

It mostly came up with Mr. Stark-- Tony, now, after he insisted one night that if they were going to be living together, they were going to be on a first name basis-- watching Netflix with him when he couldn't sleep and inviting him to the lab or to train to get out his nervous energy, trying to get back some sense of normalcy, but the others in the compound were ever present in his life as well. Steve was constantly popping in wherever Peter happened to be, saying that he just "accidentally" made too much food and would Peter like any, and Carol and Pepper constantly pulled him into conversations when they came across him zoning out somewhere. Bruce’s habits were quieter, but he always inexplicably had an extra cup of tea ready when they were both awake in the middle of the night, and the few times that Natasha had joined them during those long midnight hours, she had been shockingly good at taking their minds off everything. Thor and Rocket-- the small alien he hadn’t actually been introduced to, but whose name Peter had overheard one day-- were gone wandering the grounds more often than not, and usually looked too miserable to approach when they were around, but even they rarely failed to have a kind smile or wave for Peter when he passed by.

All the attention took a little getting used to, but overall it was actually kind of nice to have so many people around to take care of him. It was almost like what he always imagined having a big family might be like, one that was more than just him and May, where they had an actual support system instead of just the two of them. He almost felt guilty about enjoying the affection, some part of him still seeing it as a betrayal of his aunt to have gained anything, however indirectly, from her death, but a voice in his head that sounded an awful lot like Carol’s reminded him that  _ May wouldn’t have wanted you to suffer. _

May had actually said something similar to him about his parents, years and years ago, when he had laughed at a cartoon for the first time since their death and then immediately cried from the guilt. She had gathered him in her arms, his body still small enough for the two of them to fit into Ben’s old armchair, and while he sobbed into her shirt she had told him that it was okay to be sad, and angry, and miss them, but it wouldn’t do anyone any good to never be happy again. Peter hadn’t thought he  _ would  _ ever be truly happy again at the time, and he was honestly having trouble believing it now, but he figured he could give himself permission to at least  _ try  _ and start to figure out how to move on. So he hung out with Tony, and Carol, and Steve and all the rest of them, and let himself acknowledge that it really was nice to have so many people who cared about him.

The  _ hugging,  _ though, was just plain weird. Peter didn't know what it was about him that made adults just want to ruffle his hair or scoop him into random embraces at the end of conversations, but it just. Kept Happening. It would be embarrassing, except that he had always been kind of tactile, seeking out contact with May or Ned if he was upset, and he appreciated the source of comfort now, even if he didn’t understand it. He had asked Ned about it on one of their phone calls, but his friend hadn't been much help.

"I don't know dude, maybe you just look like you need it. My family’s kind of been doing the same thing to me, and I don’t have the lost puppy vibe that you always give off when you’re sad.”

“I do not have a lost puppy vibe!”

“Not all the time, but every once in a while you get this look on your face that makes me want to wrap you up in like a million blankets, and I’m the same age as you. They probably just think the same thing. You know you can ask them to stop if you feel uncomfortable, though, right?”

The thing was, it  _ didn’t  _ make him uncomfortable. It was weird as hell, yeah, and he didn’t really know how to respond when Carol would ruffle his hair when walking by, or when making his way to the common area after a nightmare ended in Tony hugging him through the last remnants of panic on the couch, but that weirdness wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, just one more part of this strange new life that he was going to have to adapt to with time. He knew one thing for certain about the situation-- that he wasn’t ready for it to stop. 

This was probably part of the reason why he was having so much trouble trying to decide what he was going to do about school.

Classes had been cancelled at Midtown, and pretty much everywhere else, for nearly two months after Thanos (after the Snap, after the Devastation, after the Blip-- it felt like everyone you talked to had a new name for it), but enough time had apparently passed for things to start getting back to normal. A lot of schools, including Peter’s own, were rearranging their schedules slightly for the coming year, having kids come in for classes through July and August to make up for what they had missed while the world was getting back on its feet, and then resuming the usual schedule in the fall. Missing the summer classes would mean repeating the entire last year of school when the regular schedule started up, which Peter desperately didn’t want to do.

That didn’t mean he knew what he  _ did  _ want to do, though, and time was running out. The summer session started on July second, less than a week away, and if he was going to attend he needed to inform the school by tomorrow night. 

Ned would be there, he knew, and miraculously MJ as well, but half of the Decathlon team was gone. Mr. Harrington was coming back, but Ms. Starr, the history teacher that always went all out with her spirit week costumes, had died in a car crash when another driver had gotten dusted. The kids he knew from band had gotten hit in an odd way-- he had heard the entire drumline survived but there wasn’t a single brass player left-- how’s that for balance? For every person he got wind of being alive, there was another one dead, or dusted, or missing, and he didn’t know if he could face all the empty desks without constantly thinking of how if he had just been a little bit faster, a little bit stronger, then maybe his classmates would be there. 

He knew that probably wasn’t a healthy way of looking at things, but with the rest of the Avengers starting to talk earnestly about what they could do to help fix the mess that the Earth had become when half the population suddenly disappeared, Peter didn’t really feel like his mental health scaled too high up on the list of  _ things to worry about right now.  _ He was being fed, and he was sleeping at least a few hours every night, and he was talking to people and even hugging them, sometimes, so for now he was  _ fine.  _ Which meant he should suck it up and go back to school, right?

Beyond his feelings about the whole thing, though, there were the actual logistics of getting him back to Midtown, which meant he was going to have to talk to Tony. He didn’t have his license yet, which would make commuting from the compound kind of hard with Happy gone, but Tony would probably find a way for them to make it work if he asked. 

Key word being  _ if.  _ Peter had yet to work up the nerve to ask for help with something he himself wasn’t sure about doing. 

This all brought them to the current moment, the two of them sitting on a couch in the common room at three in the morning, watching the new John Mulaney special-- it had just come out despite having been scheduled for early May, Mulaney explaining on his Twitter that even though he and his family were okay, it felt wrong to release a comedy piece immediately after a tragedy of that scale. Tony had an arm draped along the back of the couch, and Peter was leaning into his side, finally almost ready to fall asleep again after his latest nightmare, which had mostly been filled with the terrifying feeling of slow suffocation that he had become familiar with during those last few hours in space. He had woken gasping for air, and only managed to convince himself that he wasn’t going to die of oxygen deprivation when Tony had found him, alerted by FRIDAY, and helped him steady his breathing by watching Tony’s own chest rise and fall without hindrance. The comedy special was one of the few things on Peter’s Netflix queue that he hadn’t watched too many times already, and more importantly, didn’t have triggers attached to it for either of them.

They hadn’t really spoken to each other in the past hour or so since Peter had woken up, beyond Tony’s slightly awkward questions of if he was okay and did he want to talk about it, and Peter’s resounding answer of  _ not really  _ to both questions. He was feeling better now, but it still startled him when Tony suddenly spoke up after Mulaney finished a bit about school assemblies.

“Speaking of school, have you thought about whether or not you’re going to go to those summer classes yours has going on? Because if not, we should probably start looking into your other options.”

Peter was extremely caught off guard. “I-- uh, what?”

“School, kid. I don’t want to push you or anything, and if you’re not ready to be out in the world then you’re not ready-- hell,  _ I  _ don’t know if I’m really ready to get back in the swing of things, and I’m not a teenager-- but I don’t want you to get way behind and regret it later, either.” Peter blinked up at him mutely, sleepy brain taking a minute to compute. Tony must have noticed the lag, because he then said, “We can table this for when it’s not the middle of the night, too. I just remembered that Pepper and I have been meaning to talk to you about it. Well, Pepper technically brought it up first, but I said I’d do it because she’s busy running a multi billion dollar company and all that jazz.”

“Pepper brought it up?”

“Yeah, she knows more about that scheduling crap than I do, I usually just let FRIDAY take care of reminding me about anything important. Also, she kind of needs to know where we’re going to be living for the next couple months so she knows how much travel time she has to factor in for meetings or something.”

“Where we’re going to be living?”

“Is there an echo in here or something? Yeah, if you’re going to school in the city it doesn’t really make sense for us to be living out here full time. Might still come back out to the hinterlands on weekends for team bonding or fresh air or whatever, but the weekday commute will be a lot easier on everyone if we’ve got a place that’s not a couple hundred miles away from your school.”

“Oh.” Laughter played from the tv in the background as if to underscore the absurdity of this conversation.

“You don’t have to decide right now, Pepper said you’ve got about a week before you have to tell the school what you’re doing?”

“Classes start in a week, I have to tell them if I’ll be attending by tomorrow.” He glanced at the clock on the wall, softly illuminated by the television, reminding him that it was well after midnight. “Tonight, technically.”

“Well then, I guess you do kind of have to decide right now. Or in the morning, if you really want to push it.” Peter thought about it for a few moments.

“I think I want to go back, but--” 

“But?” Tony prompted when the pause stretched out.

“I don’t know if I can actually handle it, going back, seeing everyone, pretending everything is normal. What if I go, and it ends up being too much, and you’ve gone to all the trouble of moving back to the city only for me to fail, and--” Tony wrapped an arm loosely around his shoulders. 

“If it ends up being too much, then you stop going, and we figure out homeschooling or something, because you live with two of the greatest scientists currently alive, a literal living piece of history, whatever the hell Natasha has going on that lets her speak like ten different languages, plus everything else the team can probably teach you. Or we find a school near here that you have no emotional attachment to, or we see if you can skip a couple grades and just start taking the college courses that I know you’re definitely smart enough for. You have options, Peter, and no one is going to mind if you want to try something only for you to decide you aren’t ready for it yet. The only thing I don’t want you to do is make a decision because you’re worried about how I’m going to react, because I lived like that for a while as a kid, and it’s--” he took a breath. “Whatever you decide, I’m along for the ride, is what I’m trying to say.” 

Peter couldn’t quite look at him directly at this point for fear he was going to burst into tears, so his face is sort of turned sideways towards where John Mulaney is pacing around the screen and fiddling with a microphone rope as he says, “I think I want to try going back to Midtown. If you’re really sure it’s okay.” 

“Alright, kid. We’ll call the school after we both get some sleep, because I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted after all that emotional bonding.” Peter laughed, leaning back into Tony’s side, and slowly started to drift off too sleep once more, somehow finally starting to accept that this strange new life he found himself in really was his, and it wasn’t going away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet another installment of "everyone has decided that they are Peter Parker's parent and he has a lot of emotions"!  
I have a few weeks off from school and thus actually have time for writing for once so look forward to a few updates spaced more closely together!  
Hope you enjoyed the chapter and had a wonderful holiday season! Leave kudos/comments/ hit me up on Tumblr @it-is-the-hannah if you want to chat!  
See you for our next episode-- a good old fashioned school special!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter goes back to school!

Peter slid into his usual seat in the cafeteria like a baseball player sliding home, digging his lunchbox out of his backpack while still in motion. The past month of living with a bunch of superheroes had gotten him used to actually eating based on his over powered metabolism for once, so going back to pretending to be a regular teenager and not being able to snack his way through class had been unexpectedly hard. The good side, he mused while tearing into a banana, was that the hunger had at least distracted him from all of the empty desks. 

Well, partially distracted him. The cafeteria was unsettlingly quiet, even with the two usual lunch periods combined into one. There were a few scattered pockets of laughter, but even these managed to be soft, like jokes told in a graveyard to make the crying seem manageable. Coming back to school had seemed to remind everyone of the sheer scale of what had happened, because even those who made it through with their whole families intact had lost friends, classmates, teachers. Everywhere you looked, it felt like there was another reminder of what they had lost. 

“Hey, loser. Good to see you’re not dead.” There were some bright moments, though. 

“MJ!” He grinned at her as she sat down across from him. “It’s good to see you too. How’re you doing?” 

She shrugged. “Could be worse. My parents both lived, and we don’t really have any other family, so.” Her face took on a concerned aura that didn’t match her usual look, “I heard about your aunt, though. That sucks, Parker.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you doing alright? You have someplace to stay and everything?”

“Yeah. I’m okay. I’m staying with some family friends in Manhattan.” That wasn’t entirely true, but Peter didn’t really want to talk about how he hadn’t slept a full night in over a month, or how often he found himself suddenly crying, and he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to tell people about how he had more or less been unofficially adopted by the Avengers. 

“Manhattan? Awfully swanky for you, Parker,” She teased, and he managed to keep up his smile. 

“It’s not so crazy. The commute’s way better than I expected.”

“They say there’s always a silver lining. Less traffic, less pollution.”

“Lots of material for your notebook, too. The despair portraits one.” MJ made a face.

“I stopped doing that. It’s not really fun, anymore.” They both looked over to the table next to them, where a girl was audibly crying as her friend tried to comfort her. 

“Yeah, I can uh, see how it wouldn’t be.” 

There was a brief awkward silence that Peter spent steadily demolishing a roll of crackers, still starving. Luckily, before the quiet stretched on too long, Ned saved them by appearing with his lunch tray.

“You know, it feels like the lunch line should be shorter, but somehow it took me twice as long to get through it today.”

“Cafeteria traffic patterns follow no laws known to man or physics.” MJ snorted at Peter’s comment, and it was only then that Ned seemed to realize she was there.

“You’re actually sitting with us? What’s going on?” She shrugged.

“It seemed like the apocalypse was a good a time as any to actually start acknowledging that we’re friends.”

“Aww, that’s--” Ned searched for a word, “sweet?” She shook her head.

“Don’t ruin it.” Peter laughed, and they all settled into a comfortable lunch routine, absentmindedly chatting about how their first day of classes was going. It was surprisingly normal, and Peter found himself relaxing, until there was a lull in the conversation and MJ decided to fill it.

“So, is Spiderman coming back anytime soon?” 

“Hrmnph?” Peter nearly choked on the sandwich he had been trying to cram down his throat, and Ned pounded him on the back until he swallowed. “How would we know whether--”

“You can cut the bullshit, Parker. I saw you crawl out the bus window to go fight aliens.” She shrugged and took a bite of her pasta while they gaped at her, “I’m not going to tell anyone, obviously. I’ve suspected something was up since D.C, though. I mean, you do kind of disappear all the time.” They continued staring at her, Peter having trouble processing how his secret identity had been found out. “So, are you going back to crime-fighting or are you retired?”

“I-- don’t know? I hadn’t really thought about it yet.” He honestly  _ hadn’t  _ thought about it, with everything else going on. He wasn’t even sure he knew what had happened to his suit when they got back to Earth, that first night mostly a haze of exhaustion. 

“Do you even  _ want  _ to go back after--?” Ned didn’t finish the question, but Peter could fill in the blanks himself. After May dying, after losing to Thanos, after almost dying in space about a dozen times and waking up with nightmares just about every night since. 

“I don’t know, man.” He felt like he should have thought of this before, but now that it was in his head he couldn’t shake it. He should want to go back to helping people, right? Everyone else was a part of the recovery efforts, and the crime rate hadn’t exactly gone down with half the population suddenly disappearing. When he thought about putting on the suit again, though-- 

He suddenly wasn’t hungry anymore. 

The others must have seen something in his face that made it obvious how much he didn’t want to continue this conversation, and they quickly shifted the topic to more mundane things-- how annoying it was that they’d been assigned chemistry homework on the first day back, what Ned thought of the Disney movie his aunt had convinced him to take his little cousins to (the music was good but the plot was clearly for nine-year-olds), how MJ had started drawing birds because they were more rare than people in crisis these days. Peter managed to laugh and make faces in all the right places during the conversation, but his mind was a million miles away for the rest of the lunch period, and he drifted through his remaining classes like a ghost, finally unable to ignore the guilt that he had been repressing all day. 

Tony, of course, picked up on his mood the moment he slouched back into the tower penthouse. 

“Jeez, what’s eating you, kid? Was school that awful?” Peter shrugged as he slumped into a chair beside Tony at the kitchen table, where he and Pepper were pouring over paperwork.

“It was fine. What’s all this?”

“Stark Industries reports on the recovery efforts. Seriously, how was school? I know it was  _ fine,  _ you didn’t text to get out early, but I want details. You see your friends? Learn anything? Get bored out of your mind? C’mon, give me something.” 

“Do you think I should go back to being Spiderman?” He blurted out the question without really thinking about it, and both adults immediately looked at him.

“Have you-- stopped being Spiderman without me knowing about it?” Pepper asked carefully. Peter blinked at her.

“I haven’t even  _ looked  _ at the suit since we got back to Earth. I haven’t been helping with any of the recovery efforts, or patrolling like I used to, or  _ anything. _ I have a responsibility to go back to it, don’t I? I have the same power to help that I always have, but I’m not  _ doing  _ anything right now. So I should go back, right?”

“Do you want to put the suit back on?” Tony asked, “If you really want to I’m not going to stop you, but it’s totally fine if you don’t. ” Peter didn’t, really, but--

“Don’t I have to, though?” His voice was small, “If someone gets hurt because I’m not there, then--”

“Peter, it’s not all on you,” Pepper cut him off gently, “Other people can take care of the world, it’s okay if you need to just focus on being a kid right now, taking care of yourself. It’s okay to rest. And if you really want to help, there are other ways to do that than being a superhero.” 

There was a pause as Peter thought about this. There was a part of him, the part that was still eaten up with guilt about how he hadn’t been able to stop Thanos, save anyone, that felt like he should be doing anything he could to help, but there was also a much larger part of him that felt sickened and panicky at the mere thought of putting the suit back on after almost dying wearing it and everything else that had happened. 

“I haven’t put the armor back on yet, you know,” Tony said when the pause went on too long. “Most of the recovery effort right now is more of a metaphorical fight than a literal one. There might come a day when I go back to being Iron Man, but I might retire, too.” Peter looked up at the two adults who were clearly waiting for him to say something. He took a deep breath, and said what he had been wanting to voice all day.

“I don’t-- I don’t think that I want to put the suit back on yet. I don’t think I’m ready. Maybe someday I will, but-- not yet. I want to help with the recovery efforts, though. If there’s anything I can do?” Pepper nodded.

“We’re working on a couple new group homes to help house orphans of the Snap, I could use an actual teenager perspective to help figure out what we should have beyond the necessities.” Peter managed a smile.

“I can do that.” Tony clapped him on the back.

“Great, now that we’ve met our quota for the emotional conversation of the day, I want to hear about all the teen gossip from your first day of school.” Peter laughed as Pepper rolled her eyes.

“Well, MJ actually sat with me and Ned at lunch today instead of pretending she’s just at our table because there’s nowhere else for her to go--”

Peter slipped into the easy rhythm of talking about his day, trading stories about the less depressing moments from school for Tony and Pepper’s tales of dealing with administrative nonsense. He still felt guilty about deciding not to be Spiderman for now, but the louder feeling was overwhelming relief. It felt like he had finally been given permission to put down a burden he had been carrying for a long time, and the unexpected lightness was unbelievably freeing, even despite everything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drinking game- take a shot every time I write characters having an emotional conversation in a kitchen or while having a meal. (Don't do this-- you will get alcohol poisoning)  
Funnily enough, this chapter that involves Peter going back to school comes to you on the eve of me beginning the spring semester!   
Hope you enjoyed it! Leave kudos/comments if you liked it, seriously they all fill me with joy, and hit me up @it-is-the-hannah on tumblr if you want to chat!  
See you in the next chapter! (And good luck to all you fellow college students out there starting a new semester!)


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly shorter chapter, but the amount of fluff in here is more than enough to rot your teeth anyway ;D. Enjoy!

If you had asked a young Tony Stark what he thought he would be doing in his 40s, he probably would have rattled off some answer about running his father’s company, making weapons, making millions. If you had asked him the same question a few years later, he might have told you that he figured he would be dead by then, so why bother wondering about it?

“Do you have everything? Phone, backpack, homework, all that?”

Never in his wildest dreams would Tony, at any point in his life, have thought to tell you about this-- shepherding a kid ( _ his  _ kid, he’s started thinking) off to school while his fiance (love of his life, CEO of his company, best woman he’s ever known) looked on from her place lounging on the couch, for once not having an early morning meeting to rush off to. 

“I’ve got everything, Tony, you can stop asking.”

“Really? Even your lunch box?” He asked teasingly, pulling the item from behind his back, Pepper laughing as Peter sheepishly took it from him and shoved it in his bag. 

“Okay,  _ now  _ I have everything. Who’s my ride today? FRIDAY?”

“Captain Rogers is scheduled, but Colonel Danvers arrived back on Earth this morning to coordinate with Ms. Romanov and requested that she replace him.” The elevator dinged while FRIDAY was speaking, opening to reveal Carol decked out in her full suit, but with her hair pulled up into a ponytail under a baseball cap as if she were planning on going incognito.

“Aw, FRIDAY, you ruined the surprise!” she greeted Peter with the complicated handshake the two of them had come up with one of the times she had come back to Earth to check in from her universe-saving work over the past few months. 

“Carol! You weren’t supposed to be back for another week! How’s space? Did you meet any cool new aliens?” 

“No new ones, but I did get to catch up with a few of my Skrull friends, you know, the shapeshifters?” Peter’s eyes were wide with amazement.

“Shapeshifters? No way! How does that work? Like, can they shift into things of different sizes than they are normally? What happens to the extra mass?” Carol put an arm around his shoulders and started steering him towards the door.

“I don’t know all of the science behind it, but I’ve got a couple cool videos on my phone that you can watch on the way to school and see if you can figure it out yourself.”

“ _ Awesome. _ ” He turned back to Tony and Pepper to wave, “Bye! See you guys after classes are over!”

“Later, kid. Stay out of trouble!” 

“Stay in the grey area, yeah, I know, Tony!” The elevator closed behind the pair and Tony couldn’t help but laugh.

“Of all the things I’ve told him, that’s what he remembers. Kids, huh?” He strode over to sit down next to Pepper on the couch, “I’m surprised Cap gave up his driving spot, though. I thought he liked talking to principal Morita whenever he gets the chance.”

“He’ll get a chance when he takes Peter to school tomorrow.” Tony looked at her strangely.

“Aren’t Fridays supposed to be my day?”

“You’re going to be busy tomorrow morning, actually.” Now Tony was even more confused, because there was nothing on his schedule for tomorrow the last time he had looked, which, admittedly, had been a few days ago. Things could have changed since then, and often did, but since July he had taken to planning around Peter’s school schedule. 

“What am I going to be doing, then? Do we have a press conference I forgot about? World leaders that need to be argued with?” Pepper took a deep breath, and grabbed his hand to hold in hers.

“I-  _ we  _ have an ultrasound tomorrow morning.” Tony’s body went cold. 

“Are you okay? What’s wrong? Do I need to be worried?” Pepper’s eyes were glistening, which did nothing to put his mind at ease, but she was  _ smiling,  _ too, which he didn’t know  _ what  _ to make of, and--

“Tony.” She shook her head fondly. “It’s not that kind of ultrasound.” Before Tony could process what that could possibly mean, she placed their joined hands on her stomach and said two words that Tony, at no point in his life, would have expected to be happy to hear, “I’m pregnant.”

“You’re--” He felt like he should be panicking. “You’re pregnant? I’m going to be a dad?” She nodded. He wasn’t panicking. “I--  _ Pepper! _ ” He swept her up into a hug, finding himself laughing from the sudden outburst of joy flooding his chest, and as he held onto her, he felt a few tears slipping down his cheeks as well, because he never, at any point, had thought he would get to have this and actually be excited about it. He had some misgivings about bringing a child into the strange new universe that was the aftermath of the Snap, but he shockingly wasn’t immediately doubting his ability to be a parent. He figured Peter probably had something to do with that, what with them practically adopting the kid-- 

He pulled back slightly.

“Can we adopt Peter? Legally? I just realized the only reason I’m not freaking out about being a parent is--”

“Because you already are one?” Pepper’s eyes were sparkling. “I had the same thought when I found out, and I’ve already got people started on the paperwork. We’ll have to get married, first, but he’s a part of the family already, we might as well make it official so he can start getting excited about his new sibling.” Tony grinned at her. 

“We’re  _ parents. _ ” 

“We’re parents,” she agreed, and her smile was just as big as his. They sat in silence like that for a bit, hands intertwined, soaking in the pure joy of the moment. 

Suddenly, Tony realized something.

“Oh my god, we’re going to have to have a shotgun wedding.” 

Pepper laughed at him, “Does it really count as a shotgun wedding if you’re already engaged, though?” Tony shook his head.

“Semantics. My mother is rolling in her grave either way.” Pepper reached out and smoothed a lock of hair behind his ear tenderly.

“Well then, Mr. Stark, I suppose I should finally make an honest man out of you.” 

Tony gazed at the woman before him, the love of his life, mother of his child ( _ mother of his child!!!) _ , the best woman he has ever met, and knew that even with everything else in his life, right at this moment, he was the luckiest man in the whole world. 

“Yes, I do believe you should, Miss Potts.” 

She kissed him, and it felt like coming home, just as it did every time he looked at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed the chapter! leave kudos/comments if you did! (This hit over 200 kudos recently and I may have screamed a little in the school parking lot when I saw. Thank you so much to everyone who has read so far!!! I love you all.)  
Pepper and Tony are IN LOVE and they WILL BE HAPPY because I said so  
Also I saw "Peter is sad because Pepperony are having a baby and he thinks they'll decide he's not their real kid" angst coming on the horizon and decided to just head it right the fuck off at the pass so you are welcome for avoiding that nonsense!  
I am warning you in advance: the next two (ish?) chapters are just going to be me fully indulging in wedding fluff because my semester just started again and I need something happy to go along with all of my slightly depressing poli sci coursework, and also just because I like weddings a lot.  
See you in the next chapter!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not quite the wedding yet, but fluff nonetheless!

Planning a wedding in less than a month was not one of the best ideas Pepper had ever agreed to. They were keeping it small, friends and family only, but it seemed that the moment you said the word  _ wedding  _ to anyone-- designers, caterers, florists, friends-- they immediately kicked into high gear. Between that, the stress of her actual job, and the morning sickness that had started attacking her, she was swamped. 

This conversation absolutely couldn’t wait, though. She and Tony had agreed to tell Peter about the adoption as soon as the paperwork could be filed, and it seemed only right to tell him about his (if he agreed), new younger sibling while they were at it. So one Friday after Peter got home from school, they sat him down on the living room couch for a talk. 

“Is this about the wedding or something?” Peter asked, “ I have to say I don’t really get what the rush is, you guys have been engaged for like a year now.”

Tony flashed a sly grin at Pepper before leaning in conspiratorially towards Peter. “Can you keep a secret?” Pepper had to hold in a laugh as Peter nodded seriously.

“I’m great at keeping secrets. I was Spiderman for like, three years and nobody figured it out. Well, except for you. And MJ. And Ned and May both saw me taking off the suit, but that’s only like four people!” Pepper shook her head fondly at the teen as she took the papers out of the briefcase beside her.

“It’s not really a Spiderman level secret. And part of it isn’t actually a secret, it’s a question.” She handed him the paperwork, and the two adults watched as Peter rapidly scanned the words on the page, and then visibly startled when he realized what he was reading, looking up at them with wide brown eyes.

“These are adoption papers.” They both nodded. “Why did you give me adoption papers?”  
“Well, you’re already part of the family, so we thought it was time to go ahead and make it official. You don’t have to change your name or anything unless you want to, Pepper’s planning on staying a Potts after the wedding, anyway, but you will be our son.” Peter stared at them, and Tony quickly continued, “You don’t have to say yes if you don’t want to, though, nothing’s going to change, we won’t be mad. But we already think of you as our kid, and we want you to know that. And if you ask me, you should say yes.” Pepper hit him lightly. 

“It’s up to you, Peter, but we would like you to officially be a part of our family.” She could feel Tony fidgeting beside her as they waited with bated breath for Peter to answer, say something, anything. 

Finally, with wide eyes, he whispered, “You’re really serious?” And when they nodded, he promptly burst into tears and lunged forward to hug them both. Pepper rubbed his back comfortingly, Tony too stunned by the action to do anything.

“Whoa, kid, are you okay? What’s wrong?” Peter pulled himself back, wiping his eyes with a sniff and a blinding grin on his face. 

“Nothing’s wrong. I’m just-- I didn’t know if I was going to get a family again, after May, and I had already started thinking of you guys kind of like parents, but I didn’t know if that was okay, and I’m-- you’re sure?” They nodded again. “Thank you, for this. Really.”

“You don’t have to thank us, Peter. You’re family, now. Assuming that was a yes?” Peter nodded enthusiastically, and Pepper took his hand, rubbing his knuckles the way her own mother always used to to reassure her when she was young. 

It struck her suddenly, then, that she was a mother. They still had to file the paperwork to make it official, but with a name like Stark these things tended to get rushed. She was a mom, the kid in front of her wasn’t just a kid she was overly fond of that happened to be living with her, he was her  _ son.  _ And he wasn’t even her only child, his younger sibling was steadily growing inside her, a tiny speck with a heartbeat that had been loud enough to fill the ultrasound room at their doctor’s appointment the day before. The feeling was sobering with the weight of responsibility, but any worry she felt was overshadowed by the wonder and joy of it all. 

“So, are we keeping it a secret to make sure the courts let it pass through? Or are you waiting until the wedding? Or--” Peter trailed off, and Pepper laughed, realizing they still had news to share. 

“No, no, the adoption isn’t secret. We’re having a party to celebrate  _ that  _ as soon as you’re ready to tell people, invite your school friends over, the Avengers, everybody.” Peter’s brow furrowed in confusion at Tony’s words. 

“So, why did you ask if I could keep a secret?” 

Tony extracted a picture from his wallet and handed it to Peter. The tiny dot in the middle of the image wasn’t yet recognizable as a baby, with Pepper barely six weeks along, but the words sharpied across the top--  _ Baby Stark, First Picture!-- _ in Tony’s messy handwriting probably made it obvious, based on Peter’s expression of dawning understanding.

“You’re going to be a big brother,” Pepper told him anyway. 

“Wait, you’re really-- that’s  _ awesome! _ ” He hugged them again, more quickly this time. “This is like, the best day ever.”

“We’re keeping the baby a secret from everyone else until after the wedding because ten weeks is the usual time to tell people, but we figured family gets to know a little early.” Peter’s smile was brighter than anything Pepper had ever seen. “Rhodey knows, too, but no one else, so try and keep it under wraps.”

“My lips are sealed.” He mimed zipping his lips shut. “But I can tell everyone about the adoption, right?”

“Oh hell yes, we can call everyone right now if you want to. Have them over for dinner to celebrate.” Peter nodded enthusiastically at Tony’s words. 

“Yeah, yes, let’s do that! I’ll go call Ned and MJ right now! And Carol and Steve and everybody are all in the city for a meeting today, right?” Pepper quickly went back over her mental calendar, and yes, there had been a team meeting scheduled for this morning, so everyone ought to still be around. 

“I’ll send out an Assemble message for six tonight, yeah?” Tony asked, and the other two agreed. Peter got up to go call his friends, but before running off he turned back and hugged them both again, melting Pepper’s heart. Tony seemed to have the same feeling, based on the dopey expression on his face as they watched Peter retreat down the hallway. “That’s our kid,” he said in wonder. Pepper leaned her head on his shoulder. “Did you ever think this would happen? When we first met? Because I sure as shit didn’t see any of this coming.”

“I thought you were a total ass for about the first year of knowing you, so no.” Tony threw his head back and laughed at that. “I’m glad you proved me wrong, though.” 

“Yeah. Me too.” He pulled her in closer to his side, tucking his head onto hers, almost unconsciously splaying a hand across her stomach. She wasn’t showing yet, and hopefully wouldn’t until after the wedding, but the tiny baby inside her was there nonetheless. Even in the face of all they had lost, Pepper was positive in that moment that she would remember this year not for Thanos, but because it was when she became a mom. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who needs plot when you can have a bunch of hugging and crying?   
Please leave kudos/comments if you liked it! Thank you so much to everyone who has done this so far, I read all your comments and they fill me with so much joy :D  
See you in the next chapter when Pepper and Tony finally get married!!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's wedding time!  
Longer chapter than usual, featuring: multiple POVS, me projecting all my wedding daydreaming onto Tony and Pepper, Steve and Carol having some sad bro bonding, and just as much fluff as your heart can take!  
Happy (slightly late, oops) Valentine's Day!!!

Pepper was the most beautiful woman Tony had ever seen. He wasn’t just saying that because he was marrying her, either-- he was certain that as she walked down the aisle towards him in a delicate lace dress, hair loose around her shoulders, somehow looking every inch the powerful CEO she was while also seeming as delicately crafted and gentle as one of the goddesses from Thor’s stories, that anyone looking at her would be able to see that in this moment, she outclassed everyone else, even Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Aphrodite herself. 

“Hi,” he said as she reached the altar, the word coming out with less bravado and more raw, wondrous emotion than he had intended, but he couldn’t bring himself to mind.

“Hi.” Pepper’s voice matched his as she handed off her bouquet to her sister beside her and took his hands. The wedding march came to a close with a flourish from the organ player, and the church was thrust into silence for a moment while the couple stared into each other’s eyes, before the minister cleared his throat and began the service. 

“We are gathered here today to celebrate--” Tony knew he shouldn’t tune the man out, but he did anyway, too focused on the feeling of Pepper’s hands in his, and the soft blue of her eyes, and how he was getting  _ married.  _ He almost wanted to pinch himself, it felt so much like a dream, but he settled for grounding himself by gazing at Pepper and letting the old man’s words wash over him. He caught the general gist of it-- love is a gift, marriage is a scared blessing, blah, blah. Tony knew all of that. Maybe he hadn’t known it when he was young, but when he met Pepper he had learned how to have a healthy relationship the same way he learned everything else-- by jumping feet first into the deep end and working like hell until he figured it out. There had been mistakes, yeah, but he knew what love was, now. It wasn’t just expensive earrings on Valentine’s day and building armor until his hands ached to protect her, it was all the little things in between-- it was preparing for meetings together at the kitchen table in the morning and collapsing into each other on the couch after a long day, it was admitting when he was wrong and forgiving her when she did the same, it was crying on each other’s shoulders and it was laughing together until his stomach hurt. It was impossibly hard work, and it was the easiest thing in the world. It was terrifying and joyful and everything in between. It was waking up every morning and knowing,  _ I can face whatever happens today because I am not alone. _

Tony knew what love was, it was why he was getting married. He didn’t need to listen to a minister they’d found last-minute ( _ not even a priest,  _ his mother whispered in the back of his mind, although he hadn’t thought of himself as a Catholic in decades by this point). 

He tuned back into the ceremony when the minister said it was time to say their vows. They’d elected not to write their own, mostly because Tony didn’t relish the idea of being quite that vulnerable in front of a room full of people, so all he had to do was nod along at the words, and when it was the right time--

“I do.” He was smiling at Pepper, had hardly stopped smiling yet all day, and she beamed right back at him as the minister repeated the words for her.

“I do.” Neither of them hesitated for even a second. They’d been committed, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, till death do they part for a long time before this. 

“And now for the rings,” Rhodey, standing behind Tony as best man, produced the ring box from his jacket pocket and handed it over. “Let these rings be a symbol of your unending love and faithfulness. Repeat after me, with this ring, I thee wed--”

“With this ring, I thee wed--” Tony placed the delicate silver band on Pepper’s finger.

“And pledge to you my love and faithfulness, now and forever.”

“And pledge to you my love and faithfulness, now and forever.” 

Pepper repeated the same words as she placed Tony’s matching ring on his hand, and the gentleness and sincerity of it all felt somehow more intimate than anything Tony had experienced before.

“I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.” They leaned in at the same time, hands still linked, and shared their first kiss as a married couple. It was as PG as a Disney movie, but there was still a wolf whistle from the gathered audience, followed by raucous applause as they pulled back to face everyone, both giddy and grinning. Tony offered his arm to his wife (his  _ wife! _ ), and she took it gracefully, receiving her bouquet back from her sister as well.

“Shall we, Mrs. Stark?” he teased.

“We shall, Mr. Potts.” She teased back, and they descended from the altar. They hadn’t discussed it, but one look at Pepper beside him made Tony think she had the same idea that he did, and she confirmed it by picking up her skirts with one hand and taking his hand in hers with the other, before breaking out into a run down the aisle. He whooped, and ran with her all the way out of the church and into the street, feeling like he had the first time he flew-- free and happy and so, so in love. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

At the reception, Steve found himself tearing up for probably the third time that day as Tony and Pepper gently swayed each other around the floor for their first dance, a soft, jazzy sort of song that Tony had told him was by someone called Van Morrison playing over the speakers. Steve wasn’t normally a crier whatsoever, usually reserving his tears for when someone had died, and even then, only in private, but something about today had his eyes getting misty over and over again. 

Weddings were an emotional time for anyone, he told himself. This was a totally normal reaction to seeing your friends on one of the happiest days of their lives, especially when you were intimately aware of how many awful days they had had to go through in order to make it here. It was enough to make anyone understandably weepy, even if he hadn’t ever cried at a wedding before. Yeah, this was a totally normal reaction, even if he hadn’t teared up at all at Peter’s adoption party a few weeks before, when he had been just as happy for the family as he was now. 

Yeah, he wasn’t even fooling himself. 

The song ended, and the room burst into applause. Steve surreptitiously wiped his eyes before joining in on the clapping, as Tony took a dramatic sweeping bow and Pepper laughed at him.

“Alright everybody, let’s party!” Tony called, twirling his new wife across the floor while the DJ started up the music once more and the guests began to get up and dance to the upbeat song. Steve stayed where he was, tucked away at a table near the edge of the open-air tent that was serving as a reception hall. 

The scene really couldn’t be more beautiful. The reception was on the edge of a lake in upstate New York, outside in a tent near a large cabin. The tent was covered in flowers and filled with laughter, with fairy lights strung across the ceiling to give the impression of stars even when it was just barely dusk. Pepper, of course, was radiant, with the last flowers of summer decorating her hair, smiling with her shoulders bared by her dress. Tony, who hadn’t let go of her hand since they ran out of the church, looked happier in this moment than Steve had ever seen him. 

Steve almost wanted to paint them like this, in the middle of a rare and lovely slice of life when everything was going right. It had been a long time since he had picked up a brush, but it felt like the joy of the day needed to be commemorated, somehow. He might be feeling melancholy for his own reasons, but he really  _ was _ happy for Tony and Pepper. They deserved this, after everything, and they made a perfect couple, made each other better. 

“Hey Steve!” They also made pretty good parents, Steve thought as Peter sat down next to him with his date, some friend of his from school. MJ, he was pretty sure her name was-- Steve had met her briefly at the adoption party, and had liked her attitude.

“Hi, Peter, MJ. Are you guys having fun?”

“Yeah! It’s so funny seeing adults try to dance, though, Carol tried to convince me you can do the macarena to any song if it’s in 4/4, and like, physically? Yeah, you can do that, but ethically?” He shook his head, and his friend snorted a laugh. “Oh! And we met a couple of Pepper’s sister’s kids, who I guess are my cousins now, so that’s cool.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty neat, Peter. Were they nice?” Peter shrugged.

“They’re like five, but they seem like good kids.” The girl next to him wrinkled her nose in disagreement.

“Peter, one of them sneezed directly into my face.”

“He apologized afterwards, MJ!”

“That doesn’t make it okay. If I get the flu I’m blaming you personally for being related to him.” Peter sputtered while she stared him down, but she eventually took pity on him. “I’m kidding, nerd. Are you ready to go back to dancing?” He nodded eagerly, and Steve had to keep himself from laughing at the poor kid. He so obviously had a crush on her that if it was anyone else Steve would fully expect Tony to already have a betting pool up and running on when he would actually ask her out. 

“We’ll see you around, Steve!” Steve waved as the teenagers darted off to join the party, and then sighed, wondering when he could get away with leaving without being rude. He didn’t want to accidentally bring down the mood by staying, either, though, and he could feel himself slipping further into a kind of aching, longing sadness the longer he sat there.

“You look awfully mopey.” Carol handed him a cupcake as she sat down, tugging off one of her heels with one hand and holding her own cupcake with the other. “What’s eating you?”

“Is it that obvious?” Steve peeled back the wrapper of the treat to find out what flavor it was before taking a bite. 

“Not to everyone, I don’t think. Takes one to know one, I guess.” She finished taking off her shoes. “Weddings are hard, when you’re missing someone.” Steve looked down, trying to ignore the tears still lurking at the corner of his eyes. 

“Yeah. They are.” He pulled himself together and looked up at her. “Who’re you-- I mean, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.”

“No, it’s okay. I feel better talking about her than pretending she didn’t exist, you know?” She smiled faintly. “Her name was Maria. We were in the air force together, lived together for years, raised her kid together when the guy who knocked her up didn’t want anything to do with them. She was my best friend. We were a family.” Her voice was raw with emotion, even if the details were sparse. 

“You must have loved her a lot.” Carol nodded.

“I did. And I never told her.” Something clicked in Steve’s brain.

“You never--”

“She knew I loved her. She just didn’t know in what way.” She shrugged. “I mean, she knew I loved her, but-- you couldn’t just say that kind of thing, not when it could have gotten both of us discharged, gotten Monica taken away. And later, when we were out of the military, I was always off planet, and I always told myself that it wouldn’t have been fair to her, but really I was just scared to lose her. Now, I just,” she sighed, “I regret not telling her. And I miss her.” She shook herself, took a bite of her cupcake. “But you know what it’s like to miss people. I guess you’re thinking about Agent Carter?” 

Steve hadn’t thought about Peggy in a long time. 

“My-- friend. Actually. Bucky.”

“Bucky?”

“It’s from his middle name, Buchanan. His first name was James, but there were about ten Jameses on our block growing up, so.”

“You knew him a long time, if you knew him growing up.” Steve nodded. 

“He was my best friend. Always had my back, especially when we went to war together. I had thought I lost him once before and I-- I was in a bad place, for a while, but when I found out he had made it to this century, I gave up everything to find him, because--” he couldn’t finish the sentence out loud. He had never been able to put words to what he felt for Bucky, either because it was too dangerous to consider or just because it hurt too much.

“Because you love him.” Steve nodded, because it was the truth. “You didn’t tell him, either?” His silence was an answer in itself. Carol whistled, sitting back in her chair. “We make quite the pair, Rogers.” 

They sat there in silence for several minutes. The music changed, with a piano intro that Steve found vaguely familiar, but which made those on the dance floor cheer and Carol smile fondly. She stood up and stretched, then extended a hand to him, which he stared at dumbly.

“Come and dance, Steve.”

“I’m not a very good dancer.” She laughed at him.

“Nobody here is a good dancer. It’s a wedding,” her eyes softened, “And it’s not doing anybody any good for us to sit here feeling sad all night, so. Come dance with me. I think we can let ourselves be happy, just this once.” Steve thought about it, then took her hand, and allowed himself to be pulled into the crowd.

He didn’t know any of the lyrics any of the others were scream-singing along to, but he thought he recognized the tune from an episode of that  _ Glee  _ show Peter had convinced him to watch once. It was loud, and chaotic, and Tony hugged him when he realized Steve had joined the dancing, which was odd, but nice. Carol was right, no one here really knew what they were doing, either by what Steve remembered from the dance halls of his youth or from what he had seen around this side of the century, but they were having fun. Steve was having fun.

And, as Steve stayed on the dance floor while one song slid into the next, and the next, and the night got darker and allowed the real stars to come out, with constellations you could never see in the city, he found that despite everything, he really was happy. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Long after the guests had gone home, Pepper and her husband laid awake next to each other, watching the sky. The party hadn’t wrapped up until after midnight, and even after kick-starting their honeymoon (and their last week without children for a long time, as Peter was staying with Carol in the tower) by enjoying some traditional wedding night activities in the lake house’s master bedroom, the two of them were still too drunk on adrenaline and happiness to want to actually go to sleep. 

It had been a perfect day, from Pepper’s perspective, everything she could have ever wanted. Her sister had managed to fly out from California with her kids, and a selection of her old college friends had made it as well, along with the family she had met through Tony that she got to see all the time. Her dress was beautiful, lacy and highlighting her collarbones, with a cut that reminded her of the dress she had worn the night she had first almost-kissed Tony, nearly a decade ago now. It, along with the flowers, had been picked out with help from Natasha, who had remarkably good taste, and rush-ordered, but nothing about any of it felt hasty in the least. She had always thought she would be nervous on her wedding day, but when she had first stepped into the church to the swell of organ music and seen Tony waiting for her at the altar, she knew she had never been more sure of anything in her life. 

The rest of the day was a blur of laughter and kissing and really excellent cupcakes from her favorite bakery, of crying at people’s speeches and dancing until her feet were sore, her hand interlocked with her husband’s until her new ring left an indent on his palm. It was magical, all of it, and it was still magical now, laying in the grass, wrapped in blankets and each other’s arms. 

Tony had suggested coming out here to stargaze, which they had, for a while, but now they were mostly just enjoying each other’s presence. Pepper had her head laid on Tony’s chest, and she could her his heartbeat, steady and reassuring, while he played with her hair. 

They would have to go back to the real world eventually, she knew. She wasn’t even particularly bothered by it, because she loved her job, and she loved her son, and she loved Tony, her husband, who would be by her side even when she wasn’t beautiful, even when she was having morning sickness and felt bloated and disgusting, or when she got snappish and cranky because work was stressing her out, or even just in moments like this, when she wasn’t Virginia Potts, the gorgeous and powerful CEO of Stark Industries, but instead just Pepper, a little messy and a little emotional and a lot in love. 

“We should move out here, when Peter graduates,” Tony broke the silence, as he often did, with a comment that seemed to come from nowhere, but which she found herself agreeing with.

“It is peaceful.”

“Good place to live.” She nodded into his chest

“Yeah, I think it is.” 

Good place to live, indeed. She could picture it, the kids playing in the yard, maybe getting a dog or two, growing old with Tony by her side. They had the whole future stretching out in front of them, now. 

“Oh, look. The sun’s coming up.” Tony pointed.

Pepper turned onto her back to see the bright colors over the lake, lacing her hand with Tony’s, and together, they watched the dawn slowly arrive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Leave kudos/comments/hit me up on Tumblr @it-is-the-hannah if you want to chat!  
I literally had so much fun with this chapter, you have no idea.  
Also, for reference (because I did research for this chapter!!):  
Tony+Pepper's first dance song is Van Morrison's Someone Like You:  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqwPmj54i-s  
Pepper's dress is based on this:  
https://www.kleinfeldbridal.com/product/lazaro-off-the-shoulder-lace-a-line-wedding-dress-bea/  
And her hair is based on this:  
https://ohbestdayever.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/braided-half-up-half-down-wedding-hairstyle-with-babys-breath.jpg  
Tony's suit is something like this blue one:  
https://www.wonderwall.com/style/robert-downey-jr-style-profile-16884.gallery  
And the song Carol and Steve dance to is Don't Stop Believing by Journey, which I decided on because people in large crowds just get So Hyped for that song.  
Hope y'all have a great week! i'll see you in the next chapter!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm living vicariously through the team in this chapter by sending them on spring break a few weeks before my own starts.  
Also, we actually get to spend some time with Bruce and Natasha, because they've both been pretty neglected so far and this is an ensemble piece at heart  
Enjoy!

The months passed in the way that months do during winter, somehow flying by impossibly slowly. Natasha felt that she had blinked and entirely missed December and January, but had then more than made up for it by spending years crawling through the long, frigid weeks of February. The first day of March felt like a benediction, bringing warm, sunny weather with it for the first time since the snow had started falling in November, just in time for the team to take time off and go upstate for Peter’s spring break. It was a convenient excuse for them all to gather and take a few days together to shake off the winter’s chill. 

Natasha had never minded winter, before. She had been raised a Russian, after all, and the snow often reminded her of the few happy moments from her fractured childhood. In past winters, though, Clint had always been around to pull her out of her head when she got lost in memories, to bring her in from the cold as many times as she needed him. There was always a place for her around the Bartons’ table, Laura and the kids just as much her family as they were Clint’s, but now-- well. She had spent the winter doing what she did best, throwing herself into work, organizing relief efforts from the Avengers and their affiliates across Earth, coordinating with Carol and Rocket to help where she could with the rest of the universe, putting her own boots to the ground to help wherever she could and always, always desperately searching for any mention of Clint. He wasn’t dead, she knew that much-- FRIDAY had located him briefly after the snap, and there had been scattered sightings in the months since, but otherwise he was in the wind, and all she could do was listen out for him and try to distract herself in other ways. 

So. She could use a break. 

They were staying at a lovely lake house in upstate New York-- the same one that the wedding had been held in. Tony had apparently bought the place as a vacation house, but Natasha couldn’t find it in herself to take her usual offense at having an entire separate home just for  _ vacationing.  _ Everyone was just too happy here to be cynical. 

There was still plenty of snow on the ground this far north, and half the team was currently engaged in an intense snowball fight. Peter had made the first attack, lobbing a snowball at Rhodey and darting out of range before the man knew what hit him, but Carol had quickly retaliated in defense of her fellow soldier. Tony, of course, had immediately jumped to the aid of his adopted son, but his return volley had ended up hitting Steve in the back of the head, and Steve’s responding snowball had smacked into Thor, and within minutes it had devolved into all-out war.

Natasha watched the antics from her seat on the front porch beside Pepper and Bruce, sipping at mugs of hot chocolate and laughing at their friends. Peter had managed to convince Thor to give him a piggyback ride to get a height advantage, and the pair of them were hurling snowballs at their opponents without mercy. Carol and Rhodey were both good at dodging, but it was obvious that Steve was used to having a shield to deflect things with, as he kept attempting to block the snow coming at him instead of getting out of the way. He was  _ excellent  _ at throwing, however, and landed a shot directly on the back of Tony’s neck, causing the man to splutter as snow melted down his back. 

“Oh I am  _ so  _ getting you back for that, Rogers--  _ fuck  _ that’s cold!” 

“Language, Tony!” Steve teased.

“Oh, don’t even start, I heard you cursing at the toaster for a solid minute this morning because it startled you.”

“You did the same thing twice last week, Tony!” Pepper called from her seat, and Tony gasped dramatically. 

“This is  _ slander,  _ I can’t believe my own wife would say such a thing--”

“It’s true, I saw him!” Peter added, jumping to the ground to pack more snowballs while everyone was talking.

“Betrayed by my son, too? I guess there’s only one way to regain my honor--” Tony bent down, and in one fluid motion gathered a snowball and threw it at Peter, who ducked behind Thor with a yelp before returning fire. The teams realigned, Carol coming to Peter’s aid and Rhodey backing up Tony while he chased Peter around the yard. Pepper laughed loudly at them, and then groaned softly. 

“Are you alright?” Natasha asked her, and Pepper waved her off.

“Fine, baby just kicked me hard. She’s already just as much of a spitfire as those two.” She made a face, hand going to her stomach. “As fun as this is to watch, I’m going to lie down for a bit until she stops digging into my ribs.” 

“Do you need anything?” Bruce was on the edge of his seat as Pepper stood up, but she shook her head.

“Just need a nap. I’ll probably be back before they’re done throwing snow at each other.” It wouldn’t shock Natasha if the group kept up their fight until it was time for dinner, so she figured that was probably a safe bet. Pepper waddled her way inside, and Natasha resumed watching the chaos. 

“Thor seems like he’s doing well.” Thor had just been knocked over by an overenthusiastic Peter, so Natasha assumed Bruce was talking about the way the god came up laughing, and all day had been acting like the loud, happy man he had once been, rather than the depressed, near-silent one they often saw lately. 

“They all seem like they’re doing well.” The first few weeks after the fight with Thanos, Natasha hadn’t thought she would ever see her team this happy again. She was proud at how far they had come, even if she knew they all still had their sleepless nights, guilt and grief hanging over them and crowding into their dreams. 

“And you?” 

“What about me?” She glanced sideways at Bruce, still not quite sure what to do with the man. It wasn’t a feeling she was familiar with, but they hadn’t really gotten a chance to talk about what they had almost been before he disappeared, and she didn’t think either of them really felt the same way anymore, anyway. 

“How are you doing, Natasha?” 

“I’m--” She searched for the right word. If nothing else, this hadn’t changed-- Bruce was one of the few people in the world she had trouble lying to. “I’m getting by.”

“No word on Clint, yet.” She shook her head, and he placed a cautious, gentle hand on her shoulder. “You’ll find him, Nat.” Hot tears sprung to her eyes, unbidden, and she took a sip of her drink to collect herself for a moment. Bruce gave her the time, as he always did, remaining a steady presence at her side. 

“How are you, Bruce?” She finally managed to deflect the conversation. He smiled at her, knowing, but playing along. 

“I’m good, actually.” Seeing her skeptical look, he amended, “Not perfect, or anything, but I’ve been working on making peace with the Other Guy, and it’s been going pretty well so far. It’s like fighting Thanos was such a shock to the whole system that it rebooted everything, and I’ve just been feeling a lot more settled, lately.” 

“Really? That’s great, Bruce.” He nodded, and they lapsed into a silence broken by the shouts from the others as they continued their game. After a few minutes, Bruce took a deep breath and turned fully towards her.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry for disappearing. And after, for not--” She shook her head.

“You don’t need to apologize. It’s not like you meant to end up on another planet and get stuck as the Hulk, and once you were back I could have just as easily called you. It wasn’t meant to be.” 

“You’ve never been this quick to forgive,” he joked, and she shrugged.

“It’s been a long couple of years.” 

“Tell me about it.” She snorted. “No, really,  _ tell  _ me about it. Nat, we’re still friends, and I haven’t heard anything about what you’ve been up to other than second-hand from Steve.” He was right, and Natasha realized that most of her conflicting feelings boiled down to her missing her friend and not knowing how to deal with it. 

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.” 

“It’s a deal.” He smiled at her, and she grinned back, her real smile, not the one she brought out for show. 

Sunlight and laughter surrounded them as they started trading stories, falling easily into their old rapport. It was peaceful in a way Natasha hadn’t experienced in a while, for once forgetting all the million things she had to keep track of, the people she had yet to find, the ever-present grief she pushed to the back of her mind. 

It was spring. No better time for a new beginning with an old friend. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked it please leave kudos/comments! I read all your comments and they're all so lovely and they always make my day, so thank you to everyone who has read this so far!! Y'all are great!  
I'm too excited for spring to come to spend any time in a winter timeline rn, so we sped through a few months, but that also means we're close to baby Stark appearing! (Probably not the next chapter, but the one after)   
I'll see you in the next chapter!


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayy I'm back! Enjoy another chapter of People Talking About Their Feelings!

March went out like a lamb as it was meant to, the gentle thawing of spring beginning to show in the green patches of Central Park making Steve smile whenever he went for a run, but April came in with a roar and a final snowstorm that blanketed the city. Most of the team was out-- Carol and Thor were off world, Rhodey down in Washington, Natasha and Bruce on some diplomatic mission in Europe-- so Steve felt pretty safe assuming he wouldn’t be interrupted in the common room at three am while he silently had a breakdown. He had woken up from a nightmare that he didn’t remember beyond the creeping feeling of cold up his spine, and after fruitlessly trying to go back to sleep for several minutes, had resolved to go upstairs and see if there was any of Bruce’s herbal tea left in the communal kitchen. 

The windows in his apartment were blacked out at night by FRIDAY to keep the city lights out, so he hadn’t known about the snow until he saw it falling through the large picture window in the common area. Usually, he was alright with snow these days-- he couldn’t drive in it, and he still bundled up in too many sweaters if it was chilly outside, but he’d learned to be okay with it for the most part. Except tonight, still shaking off the blurry terror of his nightmare and with the anniversary of the battle with Thanos looming over his head, it proved too much, and he found himself quietly sobbing on one of the couches, trying to push away memories of a train in the Alps and dust that fell as soft as snow and exactly what the Arctic had looked like from a thousand feet up, from a hundred, from ten, from when he crashed and felt the cold and snow seeping through his suit for far too long before the dark finally overtook him. 

Steve’s hearing was usually exceptionally good, but he was so preoccupied that he didn’t realize he wasn’t alone anymore until Tony called out from the entryway.

“Is that you, kid?” He flicked on a light, and Steve clenched his eyes shut against the sudden brightness. “Steve? What--” Steve tried desperately to collect himself, hurriedly wiping at his eyes and straightening up into a proper sitting position rather than the hunched over thing he had been in previously, but he couldn’t help the way his breath hitched in another half-sob, betraying him as Tony cautiously sat down beside him on the couch. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah-- I’m,” his breath hitched slightly, “fine. I’m fine, don’t worry.” He resolutely did not look at Tony.

“Right. Sure. And I’m running away to marry the Queen of Wakanda.” This startled a laugh out of Steve; it was a broken, gasping thing. “Listen, you don’t have to talk about it, especially not with me, but you don’t have to pretend you’re fine when I find you crying on the couch in the middle of the night, either. It’s not like you’re the only one who’s done this before, we all get nightmares and crap. You don’t have to do it alone.” This did little to stop Steve from continuing to choke up, but it settled something in him, especially when he registered the gentle pressure of Tony’s hand on his back. 

“Yeah, thanks, Tony.” They were quiet for a few moments. 

“I was going to make tea, do you want anything?” 

“Please?” Steve shuddered slightly at how wrecked his voice sounded. “Uh, tea would be good.” Tony nodded, and Steve tried hard not to sink back into despair as the other man left for the kitchen, but he returned in significantly less time than Steve thought it should have taken, with a mug for each of them. 

“FRIDAY turned the kettle on when I came downstairs,” was the answer to Steve’s silent question as Tony sat down beside him again. “It’s funny, Bruce has been drinking this stuff for years but I never tried it until Peter made it one night when we were both up.” 

“That’s how I got into it too, actually,” Steve managed a small smile, thinking of it. “He’s a good kid.”

“Yeah,” Tony sighed, “He is.” Something in his voice finally pulled Steve out of his head enough to realize that there was probably a reason he wasn’t the only one awake at this hour.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m--” he huffed a laugh. “I’m a hypocrite, apparently, telling you not to lie about your feelings and then turning around and trying to do the same thing. Jeez, it’s a reflex at this point.”

“Toxic masculinity makes vulnerability difficult.” Tony looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “That’s what my therapist has been saying. We’re expected to be these strong, stoic men, and it’s hard to stop hiding behind that mask for long enough to actually talk about feelings. Apparently.”

“Yeah, no, that checks out. Knowing why it’s hard doesn’t really make it any easier, though, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t.” They sipped their tea. “You know, it’s just us right now, though. If you want to talk about it, you can. You’re my friend, I want to be there for you.” It’s taken him a long time to be able to confidently casually call Tony his friend again, but it felt good. Grounded him a little more in the here and now, made him feel a little less alone, reminding him that this is his  _ friend  _ beside him, feeling the same kinds of feelings. 

“Thanks, Steve.” He went quiet again, and Steve assumed he wasn’t going to say anything, anyway, which is fine, but then he blurted out, “I’m just-- really freaking terrified about being a father.” Steve blinked.

“Tony, you’re already a father.” Even without the adoption party a few months ago confirming it, it was obvious how much Tony loved Peter like a son. 

“No, I know that. I’m constantly terrified with Peter, too, because he’s been through so much even though he’s still just a kid, and I even had a hand in some of that way back at the beginning, and I love him so much and I just want him to be  _ happy.  _ But I didn’t exactly raise him, you know? There’s so many new ways for me to screw up with Morgan, and that’s on top of the general background of bringing a baby into this world, this life. There’s so much that could go wrong, and I already love her, too, and it’s  _ terrifying. _ ” Steve put a hand on Tony’s shoulder, squeezing gently.

“You’re going to be a great father, Tony. You’re already a great father.” Tony scoffed. “You’re amazing with Peter. Even if you didn’t raise him, you support him, go to all his concerts and decathlon meets, you got him into therapy, you make sure he’s happy and healthy every day. And anyone can see how much you love him. That’s the important part, right? Everything else you have help with, anyway. Pepper, and all of us, we’re here. Morgan’s going to grow up with a whole team of superheroes looking out for her, and an older brother and two of the best people I know as her parents, loving her. She’s going to be just fine.” It was Tony’s turn to be choked up, apparently, because when he tried to speak the word didn’t quite come out until he took a sip from his mug and cleared his throat to boot.

“Thank you, Steve. That meant a lot.” Steve squeezed his shoulder in reply. 

They sat like that for some time, lost in thought, until their mugs were long empty. Eventually, Tony stretched and glanced out the window behind them. 

“It’s still snowing, do you want me to stay out here with you until it stops?” Steve startled, staring at Tony with wide eyes.

“How did you know--” Tony shrugged.

“Before-- you always used to seem kind of on edge during snow storms. I figured it probably compounded whatever woke you up, right?” Steve gaped slightly at him, not used to people other than Bucky or Sam actually paying attention to what upset him. “What? I’m not totally oblivious, it just took me a long time and a lot of therapy bills to actually acknowledge touchy-feely things.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, so, are we camping out here? Because I’m going to need to get blankets, it’s freaking cold on this floor.” Steve was about to tell him no, say that he’ll be fine and Tony can go back upstairs to his wife and his warm bed, but then he decided that if Tony could get over himself and be vulnerable for a bit, then so could he.

And he really didn’t want to be alone right now.

“If you really don’t mind, I could probably use the company.” Tony smiled softly at him.

“Great, we’ll have a sleepover. Already did the emotional thing, should we braid each other’s hair or talk about our crushes next?” He was teasing the way he always did, but in the quiet of the pre-dawn hours, it felt gentler than usual. 

Or maybe Steve was just getting used to this kind of joking around again, the way he had with Bucky and Sam, where instead of snapping at Tony he can smile and gently elbow him while they get up to go find blankets, and not feel suddenly awkward just because someone almost made him laugh so soon after he had been crying. 

With a movie playing quietly in the background and Tony’s warm body sitting near him on the couch, bundled under several quilts, Steve even managed to forget about the snow, and all the memories that came with it.

It was a nice feeling, not being alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked this installment! Leave kudos/comments if you enjoyed (this broke 300 kudos recently and I Screamed I was so happy, so thank you all to all you lovely people who have been reading and liking this so far!)  
I know it's been like a month since the last update and this one is maybe a little waffle-y but like. It has been Quite The Month! (as I am sure you all can relate to if you're reading this as it updates!) The next chapter should come a little more quickly as I've finally figured out a rhythm with school moving online and not being able to leave my house and all that jazz.  
Hope you are all safe and well!   
Next chapter: Baby Morgan finally arrives!


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Baby time!  
This chapter was kind of a monster, so I had to split in two, so baby Morgan technically does not make an appearance until the next chapter, but they're getting posted at the same time!  
Minor warnings here for a character very non-graphically going into labor.

Peter was having a bad day. 

This wasn’t entirely uncommon. There were plenty of days when it was all he could do to curl up on the couch and crankily watch trashy television until he got over whatever had stuck him in the doldrums. Even without counting all the trauma, being a teenager was just hard, sometimes. Being a  _ person  _ was hard. And when you counted all the shitty things he had been through in such a short time, it wasn’t exactly surprising that Peter had his fair share of bad days.

The good had started to far outnumber the bad months and months ago, of course, with the pain coming in shorter spurts and being easier to deal with when it showed up, but the awfulness that he was feeling today had been brewing for a while. He had seen it coming, had planned taking the day off from school far in advance, even, had queued up a playlist of mind-numbing media with FRIDAY’s help so he wouldn’t have to make any decisions, had made sure that the kitchen would be stocked with everyone’s favorite snacks for when they inevitably succumbed to the energy themselves and joined him on the couch. 

Tomorrow, there would be memorials to attend, speeches to give, public faces to put on and reassure the world that yes, it had been a year since the greatest disaster they had ever been faced with, but they were healing. The world didn’t know of Peter’s involvement in the battle, but he would be standing on the stage the same as the rest of them as Tony’s family, a “symbol of how good things can come in the wake of tragedy” , as one PR woman had explained it. No one had been happy with the idea, but they all knew the importance of giving people something to look up to in times like these. It was an unfortunate side effect of the whole superhero business, having to appear larger-than-life while connecting with people on a human level, a careful balance of empathy and appearing to be beacons of hope. The whole ordeal exhausted Peter just to think about, but that was a problem for tomorrow. 

Today, he was having a bad day. Today he was grieving with his family, feeling all of the complicated emotions they didn’t want to show the cameras. Today, he was curling up on the couch, and eating junk food, and letting himself just  _ hurt,  _ for a while. 

The adults drifted in and out of the living room as the day went on. Pepper was a semi-constant presence, having reached the stage of her pregnancy where once she got reasonably comfortable, she wouldn’t move until she absolutely had to, but everyone else made appearances at various points before wandering off to grieve in their own ways. At the moment, it was just just him and Pepper, sharing a bag of cheetos between them and watching some sitcom that Pepper enjoyed. 

Pepper had been shifting around a bit more as the hours went on, but Peter hadn’t thought anything of it. He had skimmed a few of the pregnancy books Tony had bought for himself so he knew more or less what to expect, as the months went on, and Pepper had mentioned her general achiness often enough that he knew he didn’t really need to be worried. 

That is, until he heard her gasp, and looked over to see a panicked expression and what looked like--

“Peter, I need you to go get Tony  _ right now. _ ” 

“Did your water just break?” She nodded, closing her eyes and breathing deeply, obviously in some amount of pain. “Oh my god, okay, okay, what do I--”

“Just go get Tony, tell him what happened and say he needs to meet me in the medical wing, okay?” 

“You’re sure you don’t need help getting downstairs? FRIDAY could call Tony--” 

“I’m sure, Peter.” She stood up awkwardly, and Peter gaped at the fluid staining her leggings and the couch beneath her as she put a hand on his arm reassuringly, “Everything’s fine. Tony’s going to be panicking way more than I am when he hears the news, so you should tell him in person. I’ll be okay, Peter. I’ll see you in a couple minutes.” 

“O-okay.” He walked her over to the elevator bank anyway, semi-panicked. “See you in a few.” She smiled at him, and he smiled weakly back until the elevator doors closed and he spun around and sprinted for the stairs. Tony had said he would be in the workshop when he popped in to say hello to them last, and Peter could sprint down the stairs far faster than he could get there taking the elevators himself. 

He practically flew down the stairwell, almost laughing with the feeling of it, earlier mood almost entirely forgotten and replaced with pure adrenaline. The emotional whiplash was going to come bite him back later, but for now he was just full of energy. 

Bursting into the workshop, he skidded across the floor in his socks, crashing into a workbench and startling Tony out of whatever he had been working on.

“Whoa, kid, what--”

“Pepper’s having the baby!” Tony dropped the wrench he was holding. “Her water broke while we were on the couch-- actually, I think we might need to replace the couch cushion or something, it’s definitely gonna stain--”

“Where is she now?” 

“She said to meet her in the med wing.” Tony took a deep breath. 

“Okay. Has she called the midwife yet? Wait, no, of course she has, this is Pepper we’re talking about.” He started shutting down the lab as Peter watched. “ FRIDAY, what’s the status?”

“Miss Potts is safely set up in the medical wing, and the doctor on call has confirmed that she is in active labor. Her midwife texted to say that she is caught in some light traffic, but will be there in approximately ten minutes, long before she will be needed.” Tony nodded, finishing up what he was doing and heading to the elevator with Peter trailing behind. 

“You’re awfully calm about this.” Peter himself felt like the world was spinning apart beneath his feet, but Tony just laughed and leaned against the elevator wall. 

“Oh, believe me, I’m freaking out internally. We’re having a  _ baby. _ ” He laughed again, breathlessly. “But it’s not like I don’t already have practice parenting, right?” He ruffled Peter’s hair, “It’s scary, but we’ll be alright.” 

Peter wasn’t entirely sure they were having entirely the same conversation, but he couldn’t find the words to ask his actual question before they made it to Pepper’s room. The door was closed, a cheery little sign on it saying something about being respectful of the space, and Peter went to open it before Tony grabbed his wrist. 

“Whoa, kid, I think this is the end of the line for you.”

“What?”

“I don’t think either you or Pepper really needs you seeing anything that’s going on in here, okay? I mean, childbirth is a miracle and all that, but it’s also  _ really gross.  _ You should go back upstairs, tell everyone the good news, FRIDAY and I will keep you updated.” Peter hadn’t consciously been thinking about what Pepper being in labor actually  _ meant,  _ so he shuddered slightly at Tony’s words as he processed the idea of actually being present.

“Yeah, I’ll-- go do that.” A faint sliver of panic was still crawling its way up his spine. “You promise you’ll keep me updated? If anything happens?”

“Promise. But nothing exciting is going to happen for a couple hours, still. We probably won’t even get to meet your sister until tomorrow.” 

“Okay.” Peter shot a glance at the door. “Tell Pepper I say good luck, then? I guess? Or whatever you say to someone about to give birth?” Tony smiled at him.

“Okay, Peter.” He hugged him, quick and tight. “Love you, kid, see you in a bit.”

“Love you too.” Peter trudged off down the hallway as Tony opened the door, and he just barely caught the sound of Pepper gratefully greeting her husband and Tony’s soft response before the door swung shut. 


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, actual Baby Time!  
Minor warnings here for discussions of possible bad things happening while a woman is giving birth (Everyone Is Fine These Are Purely Theoretical Discussions), and Peter being generally panicky during this chapter.  
I promise the ending is so fluffy it will rot your teeth

Peter was having a bad day. 

He was back on the couch, one cushion entirely removed and in a trash bag somewhere waiting to be judged either salvageable or trash. This time, several of the adults were gathered around the tv with him, an almost excited air surrounding them and very nearly drowning out the general misery that had been plaguing the tower all week. There was still a lingering sense of grief that tinged the mood bittersweet, keeping them far more subdued than a gathering of the Avengers tended to be, but for the most part everyone was preemptively celebrating the new addition to the family, speculating about what Morgan might look like and sharing stories of small children in their own lives. 

Peter just couldn’t quite bring himself to join in with the conversation, a steady thrum of worry keeping him from even beginning to get excited about meeting his sister. 

“Oh, Monica was absolutely  _ miserable  _ until she learned to crawl, but after that she was easy. Maria always used to joke that she must be mine by blood, because she was happiest when she was moving.” Carol’s voice was tinged with sadness, but she was smiling while she told the story. Peter tried to smile back at her, but could feel it turn into more of a grimace. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to notice. 

“One of Bucky’s sisters was like that, I remember. Cried all the time until she was old enough to toddle along after us around the house.” 

“Is she the one that came over for dinner a few months back?” 

“Yeah, Becca. Oh, speaking of, Bruce, she wants your naan recipe, I brought some over when I saw her last week and her grandkids loved it.” 

“Oh, I’ll have to actually write it out, then. I’ve had it memorized for so long I basically just eyeball the measurements at this point.”

Peter had never pegged Bruce as the kind of guy to just guess at anything, but that was just the way the world was, apparently. So many unknowns, all the time, and he was just supposed to be  _ okay  _ with it--

“You doing alright there, Peter?” Natasha spoke quietly, but he still jumped at her sudden appearance on the couch next to him. He hadn’t noticed her move at any point. “You seem tense.” The other conversations continued, talking about baking and grandkids and unexpected meetings and--

“I’m fine.”

“Sure you are. We’re all doing perfectly fine.”

“I am! Seriously, what could I possibly be worried about?”

Natasha leveled him with her patented ‘I can tell when you’re hiding something and am more stubborn than you can ever hope to be’ look. “I never said anything about being worried.” 

“Well, neither did I.” He couldn’t meet her eyes.

“Peter. Everything’s going to be fine. When Tony last checked in he said everything was going great, the baby was doing well, Pepper was doing well.” He still couldn’t look at her. “Pepper’s going to be okay.”

“What if she’s not?” He didn’t realize how loud he had said it until everyone turned to look at him, but now that he had voiced the fear that had been brewing all day, he couldn’t stop himself from continuing, “Anything can happen when you have a baby, she could-- hemorrhage, or something, and even if it’s going fine now  _ anything  _ could happen, and I can’t--” he choked on his words a little, fighting the sob threatening to climb up his throat-- “I can’t lose anyone else.”

“Oh, Peter,” Carol came to kneel down in front of him, “You’re not going to lose her. Serious problems giving birth are pretty rare, and even if something does happen, she’s got some really excellent doctors down there. She’ll be okay.”

“You don’t know that!” No one could know that. He had thought that Aunt May would be okay, would be safe on Earth, but she hadn’t, and--

“Pepper is going to be fine, Peter.” Thor’s deep voice cut through Peter’s panicked thoughts. He came to kneel next to Carol, and Peter slid to the floor in front of them, trying to ground himself by literally being on the ground. It worked slightly. “Pepper is going to be fine, and Morgan is going to be fine, and you do not need to worry about losing anyone today.” He sounded so sure, less like he was offering platitudes and more like a declaration, like the king he once was.

“How can you know that, though?” Peter’s voice was soft. “You can’t just  _ know  _ that.” Thor smiled at him.

“I know it for all the reasons Carol just told you,” Peter was ready to argue, but Thor continued, “and I know it because this is far from the first birth I have waited for, and if something is to go wrong, I am always aware of it far earlier on than this.”

Peter stared at him in confusion, as did everyone else, and Thor sat back on his heels with a soft, faraway look on his face.

“I have never told any of you of my other title, have I?” They shook their heads. “I was once known as the god of fertility, as well as the god of thunder. I was never directly responsible for anything beyond conception, of course, but when I was young I often helped my mother and the other healers deliver children into the world. I was always too impatient, too energetic to really pursue such things, and after a certain point it was less becoming of a prince to learn anything but fighting and statecraft, but the older women always said I had a knack for it. If something was to go wrong, I always knew far before anyone else, and even when I stopped directly assisting with births, I still said a blessing for any woman who labored while I was there. I said one for Pepper, when I heard the news.” He paused, shrugging a little self-consciously. “I never had as strong a grasp of magic as my brother did, though he and my mother tried to teach me for some time. But I always managed these kinds of blessings. Small spells, promising good health for the baby and for the mother. They have never failed me before.” He clasped Peter’s shoulder. “I don’t promise well-being lightly, Peter. We both know how short such promises can fall, but I promise that tonight, your family is okay.” 

They had all been through so much, but Peter knew that Thor had lost not just his family, but his entire  _ world  _ last year. Coming from him, this kind of promise was-- well. Peter knew he could trust it. It didn’t entirely silence the background pulse of panicked  _ what if something happens what if I have to bury another parent what if-- _ but it did quiet it enough that other thoughts could start to filter through, and he didn’t feel quite so much like the world was about to end. 

“Thank you.” He couldn’t quite trust his voice not to break if he tried to say anything else, but Thor seemed to understand his meaning. 

Before long, the conversation picked back up, Peter actually managing to contribute every once in a while from his position squeezed in between Carol and Thor on the floor. 

It was when they were laughing about Peter’s concerns over diaper changing that FRIDAY interrupted.

“Mr. Stark is about to arrive in the elevator.” 

Everyone stopped dead, and then scrambled up to gather around the elevator. When the doors opened, it was to a visibly exhausted, disheveled, and blissfully, joyfully grinning Tony. There was silence, and then,

“It’s a girl!” They erupted into cheers, congratulating Tony and hugging one another and asking after Pepper. “Pepper’s fantastic, seriously, she is the strongest woman in the whole goddamn world-- sorry Carol, Nat--”

“Nope, she wins that today,” Carol laughed, as Peter felt a weight roll off his shoulders. 

“She and Morgan are both resting, but she said everyone can come down to say hi in a little bit.” He turned to Peter. “Family gets to come down now, though.” 

“Really?” Tony nodded. 

“Yeah, kid, you ready to meet your baby sister?”

The trip down to the med wing was a blur. Peter was still coming off an emotional rollercoaster of a day, and it was long after midnight, now, without him having so much as taken a nap. Still, he couldn’t find anything in himself except giddy excitement when they arrived outside Pepper and Morgan’s room.

He opened the door, and there they were. Pepper, lying in bed, looking absolutely exhausted but happy nonetheless, holding a small pink bundle. 

“Hey, Peter.”

“Hi, Pep.” He inched closer to the bed. “Is that her?” The blanket couldn’t possibly be anything else, but Pepper just nodded.

“Do you want to hold her?” Peter was a bit floored by the very suggestion.

“Are you sure? What if I-- drop her, or something?” Tony laughed from behind him.

“You won’t. She’s just about six and a half pounds, not exactly heavy for you, even if you haven’t been training.”

“Don’t tease him, Tony.” Pepper was smiling. “You don’t have to hold her if you don;t want to, but I’m sure she’ll be perfectly safe with her big brother.” Peter nodded, at a loss for words for everything he was feeling. “Here, sit in the chair, honey, and Tony will pass her to you.” Peter sat in the rocking chair next to Pepper’s bed, and Tony gently took the baby from Pepper’s arms.

“You ready? Okay, hold your arms like this-- and make sure you support her neck, but that won’t be too hard from that position--” and then suddenly Peter was cradling a baby in his arms, the small, warm weight of her settling just right in his arms.

She was awake, blinking up at him sleepily, soft grey eyes peering out from her small face. Peter felt a little like he was about to cry.

“Hi,” he said to her. “Hi, Morgan. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Peter.” She yawned at him. “Yeah, you’ve had quite the day, haven’t you?” He faintly noticed Tony perching himself on the bed with Pepper, both of them watching him, but he only had eyes for the baby in his arms. “It’s a big world out here, isn’t it? But that’s okay.”

He rocked softly in the chair, soothing her. “You’ve got a lot of people in your corner, you know that? There’s a whole bunch of people upstairs who can’t wait to meet you, and your uncle Rhodey is flying in in a couple hours, too. And you know our parents already. They’re great, you’re gonna love them just as much as I do.”

One of her arms flailed out of the blanket, and he reached the hand that wasn’t supporting her directly around to tuck it back in, but she just grasped onto one of his fingers. “Yeah, that’s right, you can hold on to me. I’ve got you. You’ve got me, too. You’re always going to have me.”

Morgan slowly closed her eyes, drifting back to sleep as he rocked and chatted quietly to her, telling her about all the places he was going to show her, all the people he would introduce her to, all the things they would do together. 

Peter had been through far too much in his short life to believe that Morgan would be spared from all the hurt the world had to offer. Part of that came from the company they kept, as he knew that loving anyone who regularly went off to fight things was a dangerous game to play, and it couldn’t really be avoided. Part of it was just life, with all its infinite heartbreak. He couldn’t promise her a life free of pain the way Thor had promised she would make it into the world safely. 

What he could promise, though, was the same that he had been promised, over and over again-- by Tony and Pepper, by the other Avengers, by May, and Ben, and his own parents, his first ones, so long ago he barely remembered them. He could promise that he would be there, to stand by her side for as long as he was able. He could promise to try and give her as many good days as he could, so that when the bad ones tried to overtake her, she had something to remind her that there was more to life than the awfulness. 

And he could promise to love her. 

It wouldn’t be enough to save her from everything the universe would throw at her. After all, it was sometimes love that hurt the most. 

In this room, though, surrounded by the tiny family he had been given, and the memory of the one he had lost so close to the surface, he knew that this promise was everything. 

It was not one that he made lightly. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked it! Leave kudos/comments/hit me up on Tumblr @it-is-the-hannah if you enjoyed!  
Okay this took me So Long To Write because I went through like four different versions of events before settling on this one and just writing it in one insane three hour sitting, but I'm happy with how it turned out!  
Also, this is being posted on what is (in this fic) Morgan's birthday (April 27 for anyone reading in the future), so that's fun!  
There's a little more angst than I originally anticipated from Morgan's introduction, but most of that is just kind of a side effect of the general State Of Affairs.   
That being said, my semester ends this week so I will soon have much more time to actually work on this, so look forward to some actual cute baby content in future updates!  
Love y'all, stay safe, and I'll see you in the next chapter!


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